Dust Up: A Thriller (35 page)

“What are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about going after the big fish, the ones the cops are too scared to go after, the ones the FBI and the feds are too scared to go after or that are too big for the cops and the feds to even know about. I’m talking about putting together cases against the people who are committing the serious crimes, the big crimes, cases that are so solid and compelling the feds can’t ignore them, that the press won’t let them ignore. I’m talking about making a bigger difference.”

I laughed and shook my head, feeling suddenly light-headed. I didn’t know what to say. “I’m a cop,” I repeated simply.

“Think about it,” he said, clapping his hand on my shoulder. “Dave Sable was a friend of mine, and I’ll mourn his death in my own way, on my own time. But he was also an important part of Beta Librae. I was looking to expand this thing because there’s so much work we need to do. Now I’m just trying to keep it going.”

88

I stayed outside for a moment, wondering what had just happened. When I went back inside a moment later, Mikel was already on his phone, pacing, talking to his lawyer about Miriam Hartwell. Toma and Elena had disappeared. Hopefully, they were finally getting some sleep.

Nola was waiting for me. “What was that about?”

“I’m not sure I really know. I’ll tell you about it later.”

“You look awful,” she said, her blue eyes looking up into mine.

I laughed. “Thanks.”

“In a hot kind of way, of course.” She laughed, too, but then she turned solemn. “Seriously, though. You look exhausted. The others are getting some sleep. You should, too.”

“Absolutely,” I said, taking her hand. The thought of sleep was suddenly irresistible. As I pulled Nola to her feet, I eyed the stairs, wondering if I had the energy to climb them. Still, I managed a lascivious smile. “Your room or mine?”

She gave me a sexy smile combined with a dubious raised eyebrow. Before she could answer, Mikel paced back into the room. “Okay,” he said crisply. “It’s all set up. Schultzman told Miriam Hartwell about the security footage. She’s going to allow extradition as long as it’s Detective Carrick escorting her. Judge Pauline Greenberg has agreed to an emergency hearing to look at our video evidence as soon as we land in Philadelphia. Schultzman is very confident the murder charges will be dropped.” He paused and looked back and forth between us. “What? This is good news.” He looked at his watch. “Let’s get moving. My jet’s here at the airport. We can be in Port-au-Prince in an hour.”

I wanted to point out to him that I hadn’t said yes, that I wasn’t working for him, and that, essentially, he was not the boss of me. But getting Miriam out of a Haitian prison, getting her name cleared and her charges dropped so she could escape this nightmare and get on with the nightmare of mourning her murdered husband, that all seemed more important than a nap.

We woke up Toma and Elena to say good-bye.

Elena kissed each of us and thanked us. Mikel paid for all our rooms and left a big something extra, which Elena tried to refuse until I pulled Toma aside and told him Mikel was filthy rich. He whispered in his aunt’s ear, and she relented.

I pulled him aside a second time. “Be cool, and be careful, okay?”

“Always cool,” he said, spreading his arms out so I could appreciate the full extent of his coolness.

“That I know. Thanks for all your help out there. You really came through.”

He nodded. “Thank you, too. Thank you from Haiti.”

I didn’t want to ruin the moment with a lecture. But I couldn’t not. “You could be doing lots of other things with your life.”

He laughed and shook his head, shushing me.

Elena swatted his hand down. “Tell him,” she said to me.

“You care about your country,” I went on, despite his head shaking and eye rolling. “Maybe you could help Regi. He could get you a job.”

“Go on back to America and have a nice trip, okay?” He grinned. “Maybe I’ll steal a boat and come visit you.”

Mikel had arranged for a car so we wouldn’t have to drive to the airport in a stolen National Police Jeep.

Elena and Toma came to the door to see us off. As we were getting into the back of the car, Toma called out, “Carrick!”

I paused, half in the car.

He nodded. “I’ll talk to Regi.”

I smiled. “Good man.”

Then I paused again, shoved my hand in my pocket. “Here,” I called out, tossing Toma the keys to the Jeep. “It’s up to you what you do with it. There might be some people looking for it, but at the moment, they’ll probably be more concerned with other things.”

89

The drive to the airport was uneventful. I was nervous, wondering if we would be stopped and harassed, if I’d be arrested for being an outlaw. But I showed my passport, and they let me through with no hassles or questions about entry stamps. I was surprised they didn’t pull me aside for questioning just for looking the way I looked. Maybe that was one of the perks of traveling with a rich guy in his private jet.

I was relieved the jet wasn’t ridiculously luxurious—I was having a hard enough time trusting Mikel as it was. But it was comfortable. And I was tired.

As I sank into my seat, he asked if he could access the recording, listen to it while we flew. I said sure. I would have agreed to anything if he would just let me catch a few minutes of sleep.

I plugged the phone into his charger, and after a minute or so, it came back to life. I logged in to the plane’s Wi-Fi and the interview app. I expected it to take forever, but apparently, billionaires have very fast Internet connections, even on their private jets. Mikel put on a pair of earbuds to listen to the recording. I settled in next to Nola and closed my eyes, but before I could fall asleep, before we were even at our cruising altitude, he gasped.

I opened one eye.

Nola got up and went over to him. He handed her one of the earbuds, and she put it in her ear.

A moment later, they both gasped.

“What?” I asked.

Mikel shook his head. “Bourden just mentioned the fact that they were working with Ducroix to oust Cardon.”

I already knew that. I was drifting off again when I heard a tinny pop from the earbuds, and they both gasped again.

Nola’s eyes met mine, and she pulled out her earbud. “Someone was just shot.”

“I was there for that,” I said. “That was one of the guys that came after Miriam. It was right before I left.”

By then, I was awake. And they were getting to the part I hadn’t already heard. I got up anyway and went over to them.

Mikel unplugged the earbuds, letting the audio come out over the phone’s speaker just in time to hear my exit from the boat. I heard the splash, the motor starting, Pearce telling his men to let me go.

After that, it was mostly Pearce and Bourden snapping back and forth, Bourden complaining about Pearce letting me go and about his men killing someone named Jeffries, whom I assumed was Axe-Man. Then Pearce was laughing, telling Bourden he had a lot of nerve to be complaining about anything after the Soyagene stunt he had tried to pull.

“You’re lucky I don’t have you all shot and fed to the sharks, mate,” Pearce said with a snort. “That’s what I ought to do, and I have half a mind to at that. Lucky for you, I’m a businessman, and I know this is just business. I’m not going to forget this little dust up, but I’m not going to let it interfere with our plans with Sang Kuu in Southeast Asia or Boku in Central Africa, either.” He sounded like a whimsical old man, but then his voice went hard. “So you and your friends, or what’s left of them, are going to spend the night here as my guests while my people chase down this poison of yours. And in the morning, we’ll pretend it never happened. But you’d better hope we don’t miss any, because if I hear about this again, you’re all going to wake up dead. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” Bourden mumbled, barely audible.

A moment later, there was a gunshot and a scream, “Oh, fuck! My fucking knee!”

That was the shot I’d heard from the water. The three of us looked at each other, stunned, wondering if we’d just heard Bourden being shot. Then Pearce said, “Sorry, mate. I couldn’t hear you. I said, ‘Do you understand?’”

“Yes,” Bourden said, loud and clear over the sound of the man sobbing in the background. “Yes, I understand.”

Shortly after that, Pearce had Bourden and his men escorted to their cabins. Pearce must have left the room as well, because the remaining ten minutes was indecipherable mumbling and ambient noise.

When it was over, Mikel spoke first. “Might not be much there from a legal standpoint.”

I nodded. “I know.”

“What are you talking about?” Nola exclaimed. “They admitted to all sort of things. Criminal things. They call each other by name. They shot someone, for God’s sake. How can that not be incriminating?”

“It’s plenty incriminating,” I said. “It’s just not admissible.”

“Okay, but it’s proof of wrongdoing, isn’t it? Couldn’t we play it for the authorities so they can look into it, get evidence of their own that is admissible?”

I sighed. “Well, there can be evidentiary problems with that, too, but we could get around them.” I looked to Mikel to help me out, but he seemed content to let me handle this. “I mean, the murder is the murder. That’s one thing. By now, there’s probably no evidence, no body, nothing except for an illegal audio recording, my testimony, several other witnesses who would testify against me, and a Haitian police force in the midst of massive upheaval. As for the other stuff, the international stuff, the people who would prosecute something like this, they almost certainly already know about it. They’re just deciding not to go after it.”

Nola sighed and shook her head. “Look, I know these people are rich and powerful, and they have rich and powerful friends.” She glanced at Mikel, almost accusingly. “And the people in charge of regulating this kind of thing are the same people doing it. But surely we can do something with this.”

Mikel cleared his throat, uncomfortable with the guilt by association but not arguing the point. “In order to get something like this taken seriously, you have to put together the entire case. You have to do the regulators’ work for them, then leak it to the press, or what’s left of the press. You have to embarrass them into it, make it so impossible for them
not
to pursue it that they would lose their jobs or be liable for prosecution if they didn’t.”

His eyes stayed on me the whole time he spoke, pushing his point from earlier.

Nola looked back and forth between us. “What?” she asked.

“I’ve asked Doyle to come and help me,” Mikel said. “To help me do exactly the type of thing we’re talking about.”

Nola turned to me with an eyebrow cocked questioningly.

I shook my head. “I can’t even think about that right now.”

Mikel nodded. “All right. Well, if it’s okay with you, one thing we can do is release this. Put it out on whistle-blower channels, give it to the press. Anonymously.”

One of the things that had rankled about the way things had turned out was that in order to thwart Bourden’s plan, I’d had to help protect Stoma’s market share. It bugged me that I was helping Stoma in any way, protecting it, propping up its global dominance.

I looked at Nola, and she nodded just as the seat belt light came on.

I turned back to Mikel. “Do it.”

He smiled and said, “Buckle up.”

90

Regi was sitting with Miriam in a conference room at the courthouse, close but not quite touching. Next to them was a thin man in his sixties wearing a drab but expensive-looking suit. He and Mikel exchanged a nod, and I figured it was Schultzman, the lawyer.

Miriam looked better—clean, fed, and rested—but stressed and a little shell-shocked.

Regi came over to me. I put out my hand to shake it, but he pushed it aside and gave me a big hug. Miriam came over and hugged me, as well. “Thanks,” she said, trembling, her eyes wet.

“Sure thing,” I said. I introduced her and Nola while Mikel and Schultzman exchanged a few words. Then the judge entered, seeming bored and harried. He asked us all to sit while he looked over the papers, looked at my ID—my passport—signed some documents, stamped some others, and sent the bailiff to process paperwork so they could release Miriam to my custody. Then he was gone.

While we waited, Schultzman studied his papers.

I introduced Regi to Nola and Mikel.

“So nice to meet you, Nola,” he began, clasping her hands in his. Then did a double take and looked at Mikel. “Gregory Mikel?”

I gave a quick explanation of how Mikel was involved.

“Thank you for your help,” Regi said, gracious but suspicious.

“Happy to help,” Mikel said, clapping a hand on Regi’s shoulder. “And don’t worry,” he said, leaning in close and lowering his voice. “If I were you, I wouldn’t trust me, either.” He displayed a big fake-looking smile. “Anyway, congratulations on your new position. I’ll have someone from my charitable foundation contact you and see if there’s some way we can help.”

Regi nodded, slightly dazed. “Thank you.”

Mikel then bent toward Miriam, mumbling reassurances, leading her back across the room toward Schultzman. He kept his hand on her arm, his focus on her and her alone as the three of them spoke quietly. I was just thinking that he reminded me of a politician when Regi said, “Do you trust him?”

I laughed quietly, ruefully. “I believe we’re on the same side.”

Now Regi laughed. “You be careful around him.”

I nodded. “These days, I’m careful around everybody.”

The bailiff came back ten minutes later, and then we were done. Miriam was in my custody, and we were headed to the airport.

It occurred to me that billionaire justice was almost as fast as billionaire Wi-Fi.

Before we got on the plane, I called Lieutenant Suarez.

He answered screaming. “Carrick? Where the fuck have you been? You’re calling me now? After, what, three days of radio silence? I hope you got a note from a doctor that you’ve been in a coma, because otherwise, you are in the middle of a shit storm of biblical proportions. I mean it—biblical. You’d better build a fucking ark and start collecting animals, because you will be forever known as the Noah of shit storms.”