DIE EASY: Charlie Fox book ten (the Charlie Fox crime thriller series) (18 page)

Still controlling his arm locked out straight across my bent knee, I went in heavy on the side of his neck, aiming for a point high behind the jaw that I knew would totally immobilise him.

There was no need to worry about what he might try to do with his free hand. The nerve point I was applying pressure to made it impossible for him to form any useful counter-measure. His left foot had begun to jitter uncontrollably.

“When I said ‘stand down’, I really did mean it,” I said. “Now, I can kneel here all morning, but the longer I do the longer you’re going to need to get any feeling back. Are we clear?”

“Yes, sir,” Sean said through his teeth.

I took the male address as the ultimate show of respect. Right at that moment Sean’s brain simply could not compute that he’d just been put down so hard and so fast by a woman.

I eased back on my heels, then stood and stepped back all in one move, just in case. Sean wisely did not attempt to get up right away.

I glanced at Blake Dyer, still leaning slumped against the wall. He was staring open-mouthed at the pair of us.

“You OK?” I asked.

“Holy crap, Charlie,” he said in a strangled voice that was not entirely caused by the chokehold Sean had put on him. “If I hadn’t just seen that for myself I would never have believed it. You are indeed a hell of a woman.”

I shrugged. “Maybe, but I’m also a hell of a pissed-off woman,” I said. “Because although I may not agree with my colleague’s methods, I do agree with the sentiment. You have not been truthful with us, Blake and it’s time you started.”

He flicked his gaze to Sean, who’d just managed to flop over onto his back and was trying to persuade his arms to coordinate long enough to make it to the next stage. It was taking a while and he didn’t meet my eye while he was doing it.

“Or you’ll kneel on my head, too?”

“I do have two knees,” I pointed out. “Now—talk.”

Blake Dyer sighed, pushed himself away from the wall and straightened the canvas before moving back to the breakfast table. He was careful to make sure his route did not take him too close to Sean, who had now managed to reach a sitting position. He was rubbing the feeling back into his arms and legs and rolling the kinks out of his neck.

“There’s another possibility about the attack on that helicopter you don’t seem to have considered,” Dyer said, hitching his trousers slightly as he retook his seat.

“You mean the one person who was
supposed
to be on board, but who changed her mind right before take-off?” I asked. “Right after she realised you were going to be on the same flight, as I seem to recall? Oh yeah, we considered Ysabeau van Zant all right, but I was hoping
you
might be able to tell us more about her role in all this.”

“There was a time when I would have counted Ysabeau van Zant as—if not a friend exactly—then at least a . . . close colleague,” Blake Dyer said.

“But?”

“Oh yeah, there was a big ‘but’ all right.” He gave a wry smile. “And I’m not talking the kind that goes away if you spend an hour a day on a Stairmaster.”

I pointedly raised my eyebrows and waited for him to continue. Sean had made it to the nearest sofa by this time and was perched on the edge of it, leaning forwards with his forearms supported on his knees. Dyer and I were sitting opposite each other at the breakfast table, as we had been.

Dyer sighed, and said with great reluctance, “There were some rumours that Mrs van Zant’s political . . . backers, shall we say, were not chosen as wisely as they might have been.”

“So, she was taking dirty money,” Sean said flatly. He’d got his legs back beneath him again and to a stranger he might have seemed as if nothing had happened. It was only because I knew him better than that I could see how just shaken he was.

Well . . . good.

Dyer, meanwhile, gave an uncomfortable twitch of his shoulder, halfway between acceptance and denial.

“Maybe,” he said. “And not all of it, by any means.” He paused again, as if considering how much to tell us. “I was one of those bankrolling her, too,” he said then. “Back when she was first on the campaign trail. My God, but she was a sight to behold in those days.” His voice had grown almost wistful. “We had no doubts she was destined for great things—the White House, even. It didn’t seem too much to hope for.”

“I hear that big ‘but’ again,” Sean put in.

Dyer nodded. “Turned out one of her other major backers had certain . . . connections, shall we say, with a local family who were reputed to be involved in the drug supply business. They’re known as the Bayou Mafia, pretty notorious around these parts.”

Why not just come right out with it and say she was taking drug money?

“What connections?” I demanded. “These days most people tend to accept that every banknote in circulation has a little white powder on it somewhere. Metaphorically if not literally.”

“Maybe I’m not most people,” Dyer said, his face a little stony now. “You may think I’m a member of the idle rich, Charlie, and that I am, but I do a little more toward managing my money than calling my broker every six months. I take an active role choosing ethical investment opportunities.” Dignity made his tone a little pompous. “I decided that Mrs van Zant’s possible ties with a money launderer made her no longer suitable for my portfolio.”

“Based on rumours?” Sean asked.

Dyer flashed him a dark glance. “That and a little more,” he said. “Just before Mrs van Zant was elected here the city was having one of its periodic anti-drug campaigns. A feel-good show for the voters rather than a serious attempt, I think, but it gave most of those running for office a chance to puff out their chests and talk the talk about how they were going to clean up this dirty old town.”

I heard the slight emphasis. “When you say ‘most of those running for office’ why is it I get the feeling Mrs van Zant was not among their number?”

“She was strangely . . . muted in her response,” he agreed. “And those rumours suddenly carried a whole lot more weight. The media started to ask difficult questions, and then a man was murdered and everything changed.”

“Murdered?” Sean repeated flatly. I flicked him a quick look, but there was nothing in his face. “Who?”

“A member of the Bayou Mafia. Guy called Leon Castille. He was found shot to death in a derelict house. The police reckoned it was some kind of drug deal gone wrong, as I recall. No need to guess that he was selling rather than buying.”

I shrugged. “I hate to use the old cliché ‘no humans involved’, but he doesn’t sound like an upstanding member of the community. Why did that make a difference?”

Blake Dyer sat back in his chair, crossed his legs and brushed a piece of lint from his trousers. “There you have me,” he said, “but after Castille was dead Mrs van Zant joined the crusade with something approaching fervour. Enough to see her swept into office anyways.”

“If she’s so dodgy, why the hell has Mr O’Day involved her so much in the festivities—that party at her place, for example.”

Dyer gave a slight smile. “You’re forgetting the whole politics of the situation, Charlie. That murder took place years ago. Hurricane Katrina came along and everything that went before seems to have been forgotten. And since then Ysabeau van Zant has gone about systematically increasing her power-base in this state. Nothing—and I mean
nothing—
gets done around here now without her say-so.”

Blake Dyer shook his head a little. “Truth be told, Tom O’Day didn’t want her within a thousand miles of this whole thing, but if you need anything done in this town you’ve got to have that lady’s blessing or you’re doomed from the get-go.”

“She’s on the take?” I said, surprised. It didn’t quite square with the sophisticated image she presented. But hadn’t I learned already this trip that appearances should not be taken at . . . face value?

“Nothing so crude as cold hard cash,” Dyer said. “Mrs van Zant trades favours like baseball cards. Lord alone knows what kind of a future marker she’s going to call in from Tom for giving him free rein with the Foundation here.”

“You would have thought that it would be
her
owing
him
favours for bringing in the money to regenerate some of the worst-affected areas of this godforsaken city.”

Dyer laughed, not an entirely happy sound. “Ah, but that’s not the way her mind works, Charlie. If she’s not getting something out of it, then she’d pretty much rather nobody was.”

“Sounds like the kind of woman who’d hold a grudge,” Sean said, and if something in his tone scratched across my skin, I ignored it—for now.

Dyer paused, frowning, as if he’d never had cause to give it much thought. “I guess she would,” he agreed at last. “It’s never come up—our paths haven’t crossed in years.”

“Well now they have, you
might
want to give it some thought,” I said. “She obviously isn’t about to put you on her Christmas card list. But how far will she go to even the score?” I got to my feet and buttoned my jacket. “Bringing down a helicopter she’d decided not to get on, for instance—?”

How Blake Dyer chose to answer that question might have been very illuminating, but we never received his answer. At that moment there was a knock on the suite door that sent both Sean and me into instant high alert, weapons in our hands like a synchronised display.

Our agreement with the hotel was that no room numbers were to be given out. Visitors for our principal were to be greeted at the front desk, who would call ahead to announce them. The management had provided additional security to keep autograph hunters and paparazzi away from the more famous faces, and that meant nobody got past up to the bedroom levels unless they were invited, or another resident of the hotel. It was a good system, but not foolproof.

As somebody had just proved.

“Please stay here, sir,” I murmured. “Out of sight of the door, if you don’t mind.”

Sean and I were already moving across the suite to the main hallway. I jerked my head towards the bathroom doorway, just off to the left. The door out in the corridor hinged at the right-hand side, so opened up directly into his field of fire. And if the worst happened the bathtub was enamelled cast iron, ornate and solid—and plenty thick enough to act as a shield to the heaviest calibre our unexpected visitors were likely to be carrying.

I holstered the SIG, stood to the side of the door and put a hand over the Judas glass before sliding the cover aside and peering through, so the change in light was not so obvious from the other side.

What the . . .?

The face of the person waiting anxiously outside the door to Blake Dyer’s suite was one I recognised only from the briefing photos Bill Rendelson had prepared. Not someone I’d been expecting to see here now—for a whole raft of reasons.

I opened the door to a small grey-haired woman who looked as surprised to see me as I’d been to see her. Behind her, hovering discreetly, was a youngish guy in a suit, thickset and wary.

The woman was dressed with immaculate smartness as if for a formal occasion. That particular style I’ve dubbed Mother-of-the-Bride because you see it in wedding photos just about anywhere. Pastel suits in long slimming lines, with pearls and matching accessories. All she needed was a hat.

“Oh, excuse me,” she said, a little flustered, looking past me to Sean, showing half an eye from the bathroom doorway. “Am I in the right place? I was looking for Blake.”

Despite my instructions, our principal stepped into view behind us. I really was going to have to talk to him about that.

“Marie! My dear—you look wonderful,” he said, holding out his arms in welcome. “But what the heck are you doing here?”

Much as I also wanted to know what Tom O’Day’s wife was doing outside their home in Virginia, I couldn’t agree with his first statement. The lady did not look wonderful. She had an almost translucent paleness and frailty, as if a strong wind would blow her tumbling across the street. We’d been told that her health had been a recent issue—a big issue—which was her reason for not travelling with her husband for this occasion. I’d wondered if his head of PR might have had more to do with that, but now I wasn’t so sure.

Marie gave us an absent smile and hurried forwards to greet Blake Dyer. The bodyguard ventured just far enough into the suite to see all the corners, then stood with his back to the wall near the hallway, watchful.

Dyer, meanwhile, folded Marie into a big but gentle hug and kissed her on both cheeks. She had to stand on tiptoe to let him do it. Then she stepped back, still holding his arms, and took a good look at him like an anxious parent.

“Blake,” she said. “I came as soon as I heard about what happened yesterday. I couldn’t believe it when Jimmy called to tell me. How awful—and that poor man who died. Are
you
all right?”