“I live twenty minutes from the school. I still teach there. I usually buy clothes that match the school colors. What do you think?”
Justin smiled thinly, then waited as Ellerbe went inside. It didn’t take him long—his school-day mementos were clearly not packed away in some box in the attic—before he returned with two yearbooks. He handed them over and said, “I’d like them back, please. When you’re done.”
Justin promised. Took a long sip of the lemonade, and said, “Let me ask you something. Do you believe it? You think that’s a true story, the one you just told me about the kidnapping?”
“Yes, I do. Two reasons. Bart Peterson was too dumb to make something like that up, so it had to come from Evan directly. And I think that, at heart, Evan Harmon was a crook. He liked to steal and he liked to lie. He just liked it.”
Justin nodded. “And he was the kind of guy who did what he liked, is that right?”
“You got it,” Vince Ellerbe said. “And I’ll bet he was that way right up until the moment he died.”
“I’ll go you one further,” Justin said. “I’ll bet you it’s exactly what got him killed.”
Justin decided to take the ferry back from Connecticut to Long Island. The ferry was about twenty minutes into its voyage when Justin’s cell phone rang. It was Billy DiPezio.
“You got an ID on my prints?” Justin asked.
“As a matter of fact, I do. And so do you. The results should be in your e-mail.”
“Anything good?”
“No idea. The guy’s meaningless to me.”
“Connections to Lenny Rube?”
“Not that I can find.”
“Rival mob?”
“I’m not sayin’ no, Jay, but this guy ain’t on my radar. His prints are on record, but I don’t see any arrests, any suspicion, anything but the guy’s name, which is all that’s in the system. But that’s not why I’m calling.”
“Shit,” Justin said. He knew that tone in Billy’s voice and he felt goose bumps running down the back of his neck. “What happened?”
“The offices for the LaSalle Group were broken into last night. Files were taken.”
“What files?”
“All sorts. But we do know that the lists that LaSalle’s assistant made for you—”
“Ellen Loache.”
“Yeah. Her hard copy of that is definitely gone.” When Justin didn’t say anything, Billy said, “Somebody sure seems to be very interested in what you’re doin’ and beatin’ you to the punch.”
“I just wish I knew what the hell I was doing.” Justin sighed. “Was there any damage?”
“Only if you count the human kind.”
“Oh Christ.”
“One of the guys you met with, Stan Solomon.”
“What the hell was he doing in the office on a Sunday night?”
“He was puttin’ in some overtime, I guess you could say.”
“What happened?”
“Had his windpipe broken. According to the witness, never knew what hit him.”
“The witness? What witness?”
“Ellen Loache.”
“She was there?”
“Yup. Ms. Loache . . . or I should say Mrs. Loache . . . is married. Looks like she and this guy Solomon liked to work together when no one else was around, if you know what I mean.”
“Yes, Bill, I get the drift. I picked up on that when I was with them. Kind of thought there was something going on.”
“Well, there was. And he was quite the valiant guy. When they realized there was an intruder, he told her to hide.”
“But he didn’t?”
“Nope. Not macho enough, I guess. And according to Mrs. Loache, when he saw who the intruder was he just kinda threw caution to the wind. Figured there was no danger.”
“Who was he?”
“It wasn’t a he, Jay. It was a she.”
“A woman broke his windpipe?”
“Apparently one quick motion. Bam. That was it.”
Even in the summer heat, Justin’s skin turned cold as he flashed on the women who might possibly be in Ron LaSalle’s office. Vicky, he thought. Then he thought, no, couldn’t be her—she wasn’t capable of doing that. And then he thought: Reggie. Could she have gotten up there and back down in time? Christ, was it Reggie?
“Okay, who was
she
?”
“We don’t know. Ms. Loache didn’t recognize her. Didn’t even get a great look at her, she was too afraid, especially after she saw what happened to her boyfriend. All we got was that she was Asian.”
“Asian?” He let his breath out in relief. “That’s it? Nothing more specific?”
“Nothin’ that’s a giant help.”
And then Justin saw her. It came as a sudden flash, something out of a movie, an image barreling into his brain. She was walking down the street, passing him by right after he’d left Wanda’s car. Floating down the street was more like it.
“Billy, did Loache say anything else about her? Tall, really good-looking?”
“You got it. She said tall and beautiful, but she wouldn’t recognize her again if she fell over her.”
“It’s okay. I would.”
“You know her?” Billy DiPezio asked incredulously.
“No. But I saw her. I saw her when I got out of Wanda’s car the other day. She was right there.”
“Jay, there are a lot of good-lookin’ Asian women walkin’ around these days.”
“It was her. I know it. I’m telling you, I can feel it.”
There was a pause, then Billy said, “I’ve known you too long not to at least listen when you get a feelin’. What else can you tell me about her?”
“Let me think about it for a little bit, see if I can conjure up more. I’ll get back to you and give you whatever details I remember.”
Billy agreed, then he said something he’d never said to Justin before. “You be careful, okay?”
Justin nodded, realized Billy couldn’t see the nod. “This is a weird one, huh?”
“There’s somethin’ goin’ on here, Jay, and I don’t like it. And, worse, I don’t understand it. There’re usually dots and the problem is connecting ’em. But I don’t even see the dots on this one.”
“You be careful, too, okay?”
“Later,” Billy said, and Justin clicked his cell phone off.
Billy was right, Justin knew. He’d put his finger right on the fat of the problem: People were dying all around them. Something was happening. But where were the damn dots?
Justin sat in his car and, as the ferry churned forward, he stared at the dirty blue water stretching out ahead for miles and miles. The water looked as if it could go on forever with no land and no end in sight, and Justin realized he might not mind all that much if it did.
Reggie had heard the news about the break-in and murder from Agent Fletcher by the time Justin had called to say he was about half an hour outside East End Harbor. By the time he was pulling into his driveway, she was waiting outside his front door.
The first thing they did when they were inside was use Justin’s computer to go online and open the information that had come from Billy DiPezio. The shooter’s name was Pietro Lambrasco, and the reason his prints were in the system was because he’d recently come into the country, visiting from Italy, and had gone through customs. The norm was now to fingerprint anyone entering the country. He was visiting for pleasure rather than business, and his business was listed as salesman. There was nothing else of any use. Reggie immediately processed the name and the prints through the FBI system, which had a far wider range of links than did the Providence PD. She told Justin they’d have results within an hour.
He ran down what he’d learned at Melman Academy and from Vince Ellerbe, and when she asked about the yearbooks he dropped on his beat-up coffee table, all he said was “Can’t explain it. Just wanted to know more about the guy’s past.”
“Well, I’m pretty much blind by now,” Reggie said. “I’ve been going through all the LaSalle info you got from his office. I’ve also been trying to narrow down the search on Hades and Ali.”
“And?” Before she could answer he said, “Hold on. Let me get a couple of beers. I spent the day drinking lemonade and it almost killed me.”
He disappeared into the kitchen, came back with two open bottles, handed one to her. “Okay,” he said, once he took a pull off the Sam Adams.
“Well, I don’t have enough cross-references to come up with anything useful for either Hades or Ali, so that was a total bust. What I was able to do with the LaSalle info was try to break it down and see if it made any sense.”
“Did it?”
“Not to me. But there are enough unique aspects to it that it will to somebody. We just have to find someone who can recognize the patterns, I think, or something else to match it all up against.” He indicated for her to go on, and she pulled out a yellow legal pad that had pages of nearly illegible markings and scribbles.
“Jesus,” he said, “your handwriting’s worse than mine.”
“So shoot me. No, forget I said that. Not a good phrase to use around you.”
“Just tell me what you’ve got.”
“More than anything else, it’s the travel spots. I can’t make sense of them. Ron LaSalle did very little traveling up until a year ago.”
“That’s about when he started his own company.”
“The company started four months before that—that’s when he left Rockworth. So for four months he’s pretty stable at home.”
“Could be just overseeing a new business. Recruiting, hiring, all that.”
“No question. But then things really start escalating. Look, the first month he went to Florida, flew directly to Palm Beach. Comes back to Providence two days later. Then, not long after that, he goes to Holland, flies into Amsterdam. He makes two trips there. Then, gradually it picks up. First he goes to Canada, to Vancouver. Then he’s out in Northern California. And then he really starts traveling heavily: to South America, Colombia. And New Zealand, Australia, Alaska, and Russia. The past three months, he made three trips to South Africa. He’s gone almost every seven to ten days. And then it all stopped about three weeks before he died. He’s home.”
Justin nodded, absorbing the geographical locations. “They don’t mean anything to me.”
“Me either. If there’s a connection between all those spots, I don’t see it.”
“Did you see who got billed for these trips?”
“Yup. I cross-checked every one of them. The two trips to Amsterdam were billed to Ascension. So were the ones to California and Colombia. Which means we’ve got a direct financial connection. But then no more Ascension. After that, all the trips are billed to different companies. Seven or eight different names.”
“Did you—”
“Yup, I tried finding them, but so far no luck.”
“Not one of them?”
“No. I’ve requested an expert in this area, but I haven’t heard back yet. I just don’t have the know-how. And there are federal channels. I can’t just go and try to get the SEC to do my job for me.”
“How do we try to cut through all that?”
“I don’t know. I told you, as hot as this is, we’re still not the highest-level priority. And every time a bomb goes off in the Middle East—or anywhere, for that matter—we go lower on the priority list.”
He indicated the papers she’d put together, organizing the information. “So what do you need to try to make sense of all this?”
“I need more information. Something I can compare it to. Why’d he go to all these countries, who was he talking to, what kinds of businesses, who was paying him after Ascension stopped? I’d also like to know if there’s any matchup on the Ascension side.”
“Such as?”
“Business crossovers, for instance. I’d like to see if Ascension does business with any of the other companies paying for LaSalle’s trips. And I’d like to see if any of the places match up to any trips made by Evan Harmon or his associates.”
“What else?”
“If we’re being thorough, we should try to check the same things to see if anything matches up with Ellis St. John or even David Kelley or . . .”
“Or who?” he asked as her voice trailed off.
“Or Abby Harmon,” she said.
He barely missed a beat in the rhythm of their conversation. But he was well aware that he did indeed miss it. “Meaning Abby could have been doing her husband’s dirty work?”
“Or doing whatever she was doing behind his back, without his awareness. We have a connection between LaSalle and Harmon. It’s tenuous, but it’s there. Right now, it seems to be purely business and, until we know more, there’s no reason to think it’s anything but legal. But might as well check out whether there’s a more personal connection, too, and that might come between LaSalle and Mrs. Harmon. She seems to connect to quite a few people.”
“Okay,” he said.
“Just okay?”
“Just okay. You have any ideas on how we can get any of this info?”
“Some. I’d like to make an in-person visit to the Ascension offices to begin with.”
“It’s too late now. Set it up for tomorrow morning. No, set it up for tomorrow afternoon if you can.”
“Why afternoon?”
“Because I want to see if I can get a date in the city tomorrow night. So I can just stay in.”
“Have you lost your mind? A date, Jay?”
“This one’ll be worth it,” he said. “And besides, we can go see somebody in the morning out here.”
“Another social occasion or could it be work related?”
“The morning’s definitely work related.”
“Who we going to see?”
“Dave Kelley.”
“The big rival?”
“I’ll tell you what, Reggie. You might want to think about knocking that stuff off. You haven’t earned the right to flirt and make comments on my personal life.”
She looked stricken. It was the look of someone who’d forgotten she was on probation and had way overstepped her bounds. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I mean it. I apologize.”
He nodded. “Okay,” he said. Then, after a brief pause: “I guess we can’t do much more today. At least right now. Would you like to go get dinner?”
He got that crooked smile from her. “Do you
want
to have dinner with me, Jay?”
“No,” he said. “Not really.”
“Then I’ll see you at what, nine a.m.?”
“Make it eight-thirty. We’ve got to go to Riverhead and there’ll be traffic.”
“Eight-thirty it is. I’ll be ready.”
For the second night in a row he stood at his living room window and watched Regina Bokkenheuser and her lopsided smile head out to her car and drive off into the town and away from him.
He thought about the last time he’d touched her. He remembered the way she felt. And the way her hair smelled. And he remembered his lips lightly kissing the little tattooed butterfly nestled in the small of her back. She used a soap on her body that had the slightest hint of vanilla and even now he could almost taste it.
He thought about the little dots that made up the butterfly.
It’s all about the dots, he thought.
Justin took a deep breath because he knew he was going to hate himself for what he was about to do, then he went to his desk, looked up a phone number he’d added into his notes on the Hades file. He picked up his phone and called Belinda Lambert, Ellis St. John’s assistant at Rockworth and Williams. When Belinda answered, Justin identified himself and said that he’d like to get together. As soon as possible.
“Really?” she said. “You mean, like, in the office or something?”
“No,” he told her, and he remembered the vague air of desperation she had about her. And her willingness to be used. “I was thinking more about dinner.”
“You’re asking me out to dinner?” Even over the phone Justin could hear the combination of pleasure and surprise. But there was something else, too. There was also a certain amount of satisfaction. As if she somehow knew that he’d call sooner or later. He thought that came from being around the hounds on Wall Street. There’s no question she had a certain amount of sex appeal. It might be obvious and it might be a bit cheap, but it was there. And in her world, that meant that eventually she’d be a target for somebody on the prowl.
“If you’ll go,” he told her.
“Well, sure I’ll go,” she said eagerly. “When?”
“How about tomorrow night?” he asked.
“Tomorrow? Well . . . I . . .” The hesitation wasn’t genuine and it didn’t last long. “Okay,” she said. “Sure.”
They arranged a time and a place—he asked her where she lived and picked a good restaurant within a reasonable distance of her apartment. He said, “I’ll see you there.”
She said, “This is cool.”
He said, “Yeah, cool,” and after he hung up, he felt like a total shit for a minute, maybe two.
And then he went back to his computer and began to work.
Justin was just about to call it quits. It was about ten-fifteen at night when the phone rang.
“It’s me,” Reggie said.
There was a strange air of familiarity in the way she said those two words. There was both a hesitancy to the greeting and a definite intimacy. It was the way an ex-wife would just say hi when calling after the split. It threw Justin a little bit. There was no question that intimacy was hanging over the two of them. He wanted it to go away. But at the same time he liked it. It evoked a certain warmth and, he had to admit, lust. He wondered if it was the same on Reggie’s end and decided it had to be. He shook his head—he did not need such distractions at the moment. But he couldn’t help picturing her on the other end of the phone, shoes off, sitting on the motel bed, wearing jeans and a T-shirt, one foot planted with her knee up, the other leg tucked under her. He knew that’s the way she sat. And he also couldn’t help wondering if this was a personal call or business and he realized he wasn’t sure he wanted it to be all business.
But it was.
“I got a hit on your Rhode Island shooter.”
“Let’s have it.”
“His name’s Pietro Lambrasco, just as Billy said it was. And he’s not mobbed up—”
“So what the hell is he?!”
“Let me finish. What I was saying is that he’s not mobbed up
here
.”
“Back in Italy?”
“Sicily, to be precise. The only reason we have it on record is that two of the guys in the Bureau were over there a couple of years ago to help with the murder of that judge who got blown up on the highway, the one from Rome. They exchanged a lot of info and computer files. This guy Lambrasco was in one of their files.”
“What’s his story?”
“A stone-cold hit man.”
Justin stayed silent.
“You still there, Jay?”
“Still here.” Another brief pause. Then, “Reggie, what the hell is a Sicilian hit man doing in Providence, Rhode Island, going after Bruno Pecozzi?”
“I was hoping you’d have the answer to that one.”
Again, nothing from Justin.
“So what now?” Reggie asked finally.
“I’m going back to work on the dots,” Justin said.
“Did you make your date for tomorrow night?”
“Yup,” Justin said.
“You going to tell me what that’s all about?”
“Nope.”
“Then I guess I’ll see you at eight-thirty.”
“Yup,” Justin said again.