Cries of the Lost (19 page)
Much of my strategy since being declared dead was to stay dead, and entirely under the radar. I believed the best way to avoid being caught was to avoid being pursued in the first place. I knew this was a little deluded, logic being that the more actively I operated, the greater the odds I’d draw the wrong kind of attention.
The email’s existence said as much as the content of the message. If they’d known enough to track us down, I’d be upside down in a dark room somewhere at the tender mercies of an interrogation team. It was a big decision to rob themselves of the element of surprise, so their search must have stalled.
Writing to David Reinhart was also significant. He was clearly connected to the bank. Assuming they gave up everything they had, an interview with Mr. Etherton, the safe-deposit guy in Grand Cayman, would confirm my nationality. Yet David Reinhart lived in the outer precincts of my fabricated world of false identity. If they could have penetrated another layer or two, they would have.
It was also possible the reckoning with Florencia’s killer had led to exposing her embezzlement scheme to the FBI. If I could grab an end of that string and pull it free, any forensic accountant could do the same. The trail led to the bank in the Caymans. They would have found it virtually empty, everything cleaned out but the safe-deposit box.
Easy enough to keep the box intact and wait to see who shows up to claim the contents.
“What a dope,” I said to Natsumi, sharing my logic.
“Sort of,” she said. “We did get the code. I bet they’re thinking, what dopes
we are
for letting those tricky people grab the goods and make a clean getaway. With just a little stopover at the Royal Cayman Islands Police Service.”
I said she had a good point. “Ramming our little car could be seen as an act of frustration. With no official jurisdiction, they took the crudest approach.”
“They probably didn’t expect the driver of the little car to take off like a jack rabbit on amphetamines.”
“You’re trying to make me feel better.”
“You’re hard on yourself, Arthur. Maybe that’s what keeps you alive. Keeps us both alive, but I’m on your side, even when you’re not.”
I logged the return address from the FBI email.
I was almost disappointed by the simplicity of it all, though thinking the likelihood of there being a person named Eloise Harmon at the FBI was the same as having a crew of men in black chasing down aliens.
Then, with the exception of a single channel of communications, I killed off David Reinhart, without remorse.
C
HAPTER
11
I
called my sister Evelyn.
“I’m not even going to ask you where you are,” she said.
“Provence. In Aix-en-Provence.”
“Do you remember any of the French I taught you?”
“
Un peu.
Any change in the government’s interest in Florencia’s scam?” I asked.
“Not that I know of. Why?’
“Just asking. Has Shelly Gross been around?”
“Not as far as I know,” she said. “Should he be?”
“Not necessarily.”
“I might be able to help you more if you’d stop being so cryptic,” she said.
“Florencia’s account in Grand Cayman was being watched. We got the contents out of the box, but were nearly snatched in the process. It looked like the FBI was involved, but we can’t be sure.”
“Oh, dear.”
“Evelyn, you probably were closer to Florencia than anyone but me. I want you to answer me honestly—did you ever suspect that she was having an affair?”
The phone was quiet a long time before she answered.
“Absolutely not. She loved you, Arthur, like crazy. I couldn’t have been her friend if she hadn’t.”
“Did you suspect she was skimming and lapping, laundering money and hiding it in an offshore account?”
“No. But it’s not the same.”
The conversation drifted into far less significant waters after that. Before signing off, she had one more thought.
“I will say one thing. I always wondered if all that noisy vivaciousness was hiding something very different. Something quietly sad.”
Psychologists will tell you that feelings are merely unarticulated thoughts. And possibly far more accurate. But only language can turn subconscious insight into serviceable ideas and concepts. And until Evelyn had spoken those words, I was unaware that I shared the same intuition.
Or was this a manufactured memory, empirical evidence in search of erstwhile intimation?
T
HE RADIO
with its embedded tracking device spent the next week in the house up in the hills. With its position pinpointed by the GPS, I was able to use Google Earth to fly overhead and eke out a description of the property.
The main house was in a U shape, shadows from the tiled roof indicating a variety of story heights. Judging by the size of neighboring houses, there was easily 5,000 square feet of living space. A swimming pool was tucked inside the U, which was contained by a curved stone wall. How much of the surrounding land belonged to the estate was hard to estimate, though large pine trees and wild Provençal flora dominated the landscape, with only a few acres nearby cleared for cultivation.
Not bad for a retired colonel in the Guardia Civil.
T
HE ALARM
for the tracking device went off at nine o’clock at night. We’d gone to bed early, reflecting the oddball schedule we’d fallen into, with no outside forces on hand to shape more regular behavior. I grabbed the smartphone off the table and forced my eyes to focus. The green dot was out of the house and starting down the long driveway at a good clip.
At the end of the drive, it turned right, retracing the route it took on the way in. I carried the phone around with me while I got dressed, and made a bucket of coffee. Natsumi wandered into the kitchen rubbing her eyes and muttering, “What’s going on?”
“Pure speculation, but I bet whoever picked up the radio at the post office left it in the car. Now it looks like he’s heading back to Aix.”
“Or she.”
“Or she. If it looks like the green dot is actually coming to town, I’ll go lie in wait.”
“To do what?” she asked.
“Identify our target. I don’t know after that. Depends on what I identify.”
It did indeed look as if the possessor of the radio was following the path back into town. I pulled up the tracking program on the laptop and showed Natsumi how to zoom in and out on the green dot.
“You can get close enough to pat that dot on the head. I’ll call you as soon as I know anything more.”
I drove to an entrance ramp at La Provençale about a mile outside of Aix and waited. I zoomed in as far as the program would let me, and set the tracking to continuous, thus following the green dot as it raced down the highway.
As it closed in on the end of my ramp, I took off, timing my entry so I could fall in directly behind the pursued vehicle. As luck would have it, there was only one car within my headlights, a late model crossover SUV with what looked like a Volkswagen logo stuck on the rear hatch. It was moving along rapidly, but I no longer feared a car able to outrun my rented Opel.
As hoped, the Volkswagen exited onto a main artery that led to the broad Route de Galice, and subsequently into the heart of Aix-en-Provence. I followed the vehicle into the snarl of streets north of the Cours Mirabeau, which delineated the major districts of the city. It pulled down a narrow street lined with restaurants and outdoor cafés, then took a sharp right down an even narrower lane where it stopped and parked along the curb. I drove past into a tiny courtyard, where I turned around and went back toward the Volkswagen. I drove by in time to see a short man with a head of thick black hair, broad in both shoulder and waist, pointing the remote key at the SUV, whose lights flashed in response.
I had my man.
I had to park in a residents-only parking zone in order to keep my eye on my quarry, who found his way to a street filled with nightlife, and subsequently disappeared into a dimly lit café. I waited for a few moments, then followed.
He sat by himself at a table along the wall, facing the door to the café. He was around forty and had a broad forehead and massive Gallic nose. He held a glass filled with an unidentifiable amber liquor with both hands, which were thick with short fingers showing the battering of hard manual labor. I looked around the place as if searching for someone, and then not finding her, turned and left.
I went across the street to an outdoor café and sat in a seat with a clear view of the man’s hangout. I ordered a coffee and called Natsumi.
“Do you think you can flirt in French?” I asked her.
“C’est possible
.”
“How quickly can you doll yourself up and slip into something sexy?”
“Are you suggesting what I think you’re suggesting?”
“He’s drinking alone in a bar on the Rue de Pourcieux.” I gave her the exact address. “Not a bad looking guy, though I doubt many exotic Asian women come on to him. And by the way, he’s way too young to be our colonel.”
“I hope he’s a leg man. I don’t have much in the way of cleavage,” she said.
“I’ll be at the café across the street, so I’ll see you go in. Then I’ll follow and stand at the bar.”
“There’s no guarantee here, you know,” she said. “Femme fatale wouldn’t be high on my list of life skills.”
“Nah, go on. You’re a natural.”
About twenty minutes later a cab pulled up and Natsumi got out, carefully I’m sure, given the startling shortness of her black skirt, nicely complemented by a pair of high black boots. She held a clutch to her white silk blouse and had a brilliant blue silk scarf around her neck, the only thing I recognized.
I waited another ten minutes, then ambled over to the café. Through the window, I could see our mark still alone at his table, but he sat up straighter and had mustered a slight grin that almost seemed natural on his meaty puss. Natsumi sat at a table nearby in full view of his, and had her legs crossed. She sipped at a tall glass of red wine and was saying something to him that I couldn’t make out.
I decided it was time to go inside. I was happy to see an empty stool available at the bar, since the persistent soreness in my leg made standing still far more tiring than even a long walk. I sat, then ordered a brandy, ice water and a basket of bread.
It wasn’t long before Natsumi joined the man at his table. He waved to the sole waiter, who brought them fresh drinks. He was now doing most of the talking, while Natsumi listened with rapt attention. When I walked past their table on the way to the WC, it sounded as if he was mixing some heavily accented English in with the French.
“
Ça doit etre très dur labeur,”
I heard Natsumi say. That must be really hard work.
The Frenchman’s capacity was formidable, but eventually Natsumi’s encouragement to continually refill began to have an effect, proven by his own journey to the restroom which involved a noticeable heel to port.
Natsumi checked her lipstick in a tiny round compact taken from her clutch, in almost a caricature of feminine preoccupation. Then she hooked a finger at the waiter, who brought over another round. Back at the table, the Frenchman stared at the drink as if wondering how it got there. Natsumi raised her wine in salutation, and they clinked glasses.
I texted her. “Ready to bug out?”
“Ready,” she wrote back.
“Say you need to make a call outside then run for it.”
“Not in these boots.”
From her hand gestures, it looked like she was telling him to stay put, that she’d be right back. Ten minutes later he was still looking toward the door, but his squared-off shoulders had begun to sag back into their original position.
Knowing how the guy drove, I hoped we hadn’t just committed vehicular manslaughter.