The Consignment (5 page)

CHAPTER 5

“Lots of people shoot straight, they’re not all murderers,” Rita Durranti declared when I finished telling her about Trevanian and Lagundi’s visit to Haplon. “I’m more worried they were out at your plant so fast. They’re pushing this along like they’re in an awful hurry.”

Rita was a senior Customs officer, the single point of contact between Hawkeye and the civilian world. She was the person Dimitri and I came to when we needed information or access to the confidential files that Customs kept on suspect arms shipments, and the range of lowlifes, weirdos, and downright dangerous people behind them. In return, and subject to clearance from Channon, we reciprocated with information that the Customs people were in no position to gather. A slightly built woman of Italian descent, Rita lowered her eyes as we walked.

“I can’t believe you still want to go on with Hawkeye. Not after Dimitri—” She lifted a hand. Dimitri’s duplicity. His death. “I thought you had more brains. Honest to God, I did.”

We paused by the inscription stone at Grant’s Tomb, then turned to stroll around the paved plaza. It was Rita, with her somewhat strange sense of humor, who first selected the memorial as an appropriate meeting place for any exchange of information connected with Hawkeye. I generally preferred these short, out-of-doors encounters to my occasional preappointed forays into her anonymous office at Customs downtown, but so soon after Dimitri’s death, the Tomb cast an undeniable pall.

“You know, the worst part is I never really liked the guy,” she said. “It was like dealing with someone who had a piece missing. And I can tell you, he didn’t much like working with me, a woman. No offense, but Dimitri was three parts sexist pig.”

“There’s worse than Dimitri.”

“I know. I’ve dated both of them.” She shot me a look. “Maybe the IRS screwed up. If they made too much noise, that could have got him killed.”

“Officially, it’s an accident.”

“Officially, Ned, you’re a sales manager.”

I let that one pass.

“If you felt threatened, in any kind of danger yourself,” she said, “you’d tell me, right?”

I nodded, but her gaze lingered skeptically on my face. I had a lot of time for Rita Durranti. Mid-thirties, and still single, she was tough in that way a woman can sometimes be after growing up with too many brothers. Rita had five: four older, one younger. She only stood about five feet two in her socks, but she was a packet of energy and drive. Her grandfather and father had both worked the Fulton Fish Market, there wasn’t much anyone could have told her about the ways of the world that she hadn’t learned firsthand by the time she was fifteen. When Channon first introduced us, I admit I had reservations, she seemed too young, too inexperienced for the work. After two years, I’d have been more than a little disappointed if she moved on to the more senior posting in Customs that she richly deserved. If I’d wanted to talk with anyone about how vulnerable Dimitri’s death had made me feel, it would have been with Rita. But I didn’t. Finally she seemed to get the unspoken message. She sat down on a bench.

“I can’t find any mention of Lagundi in our files. I went through everything on Liberia twice. Zip.”

“Maybe she’s got nothing to do with Liberia.”

“You saw Channon’s report?” Rita said. I had. Channon’s report wasn’t actually Channon’s, it was the DIA’s assessment of where Trevanian might eventually deliver the Haplon materiel. Apart from a crazy predilection for placing numerical probabilities on every half-assed guess they make, the DIA’s assessments on these matters is generally superior to the CIA’s. And after processing all the information we’d given them—types and quantities of materiel under discussion, and Trevanian’s name—they’d concluded that Liberia was the most likely destination. Exactly which rebel faction it was going to, they hadn’t quite figured. “How often does he get it wrong?” she said, meaning Channon. “Trevanian’s company’s active there. That’s where there’s a war brewing. That’s where they need the guns.”

I frowned. I told her Liberia was only a maybe. She asked me where I thought Lagundi came from.

“Rossiter says Nigeria.”

She nodded. “End User Certificate’s Nigerian.”

I cocked my head. “I didn’t tell you that.”

“You didn’t have to. I got a copy from Commerce this morning. Just for the night-sights.”

“What date was on it?”

She was perplexed. “Haplon filed it, Ned. The date’s whatever date you put on it.” We looked at each other a moment, then I turned to face the memorial. “You didn’t date it?” she said.

“I didn’t see it.”

She missed a beat. “If there’s an End User Certificate, there’s an order.”

I told her to fax me a copy of the certificate as soon as she got back to her office. My home number, I said. But by this time Rita’s trail of thought was catching up with mine.

“Rossiter never told you Trevanian had placed the order?”

“It’s his company.”

“You’re his sales manager. What reason could he have for keeping you in the dark, just sidelining you like that?” When I suggested that there could be a million reasons, she said, “All right. Name one.”

I was silent.

“Then let me name one,” she said. “Rossiter’s found out who you are.” I turned my head in denial. Rita made a face. “Don’t do the brave soldier number on me. This is a real problem. If the order turns out to be a breaker, how do we stay on top of it? We can’t if you’ve been sidelined.”

“We will.”

“How?” When she saw I had no reply, her lips went tight. She pulled a notepad from her briefcase, tore out a page, and gave it to me. “Those are some of the questions I prepared, things I was going to ask you about the Trevanian deal. How many can you answer?”

The questions were extensive. Mostly they concerned preliminary paperwork and correspondence between Haplon and Trevanian that I should have seen. Some pieces I should have written myself. But I hadn’t seen any of it. I couldn’t answer a single one of the questions. Folding the torn page, I slipped it into my pocket.

“Well?” said Rita.

“I’ll find out.”

She rolled her eyes.

“I’ll get copies of the correspondence,” I told her. “Whatever you need. Just leave it with me.”

A young couple came by, pushing a baby in a stroller. When they sat down on the next bench, Rita got up and we walked over to the granite mausoleum, then paused by the engraved maps of Grant’s campaigns, a temporary exhibition. Maps and campaigns that I’d pored over for interminable hours as a West Point cadet, now long forgotten. Rita studied the maps.

“Did Channon tell you about the two orders Dimitri put through the system for Trevanian?”

I nodded. Channon had told me just that morning when I reported to him on the phone. I told him I was going to see Rita. Channon mentioned the old orders and warned me not to get dragged into any wrangle with Rita about Dimitri’s work, he said he was concerned that Customs might make their own decision to shut Hawkeye down.

“And did he tell you I wasn’t happy about them?” she said. “Even at the time?”

“He mentioned it.”

“Then maybe he also mentioned that Customs came within a whisker of totally withdrawing our support from Hawkeye.” My head swiveled, I looked at her. “That’s right. And now Trevanian’s back on the scene, Dimitri’s dead, and you can just imagine what I’m thinking.”

“Without your support, there’s no operation.”

“I know,” she said.

My heart fell. “We do still have your support.”

She looked at me. She didn’t reply.

“Rita?”

“I kept telling Channon that Dimitri wasn’t being straight with me.”

“You don’t know he wasn’t being straight.”

“Maybe if Channon had paid some attention, Dimitri wouldn’t have wound up dead.” She turned away from the maps and strolled along by the wall, and I went with her. She clutched her briefcase to her chest. She was clearly troubled, not only by what had already happened, but by what else might occur. She seemed to be puzzling out how she should proceed. At the end of the wall, she stopped and faced me. “Why do you want to go on with this?”

“Because it’s not finished.”

“That’s all?”

“Trevanian’s order looks like a breaker. What more do you want?”

“So going on with it, that’s your duty.”

“If you like.”

“Not revenge?”

“On who?”

“That’s what I’m wondering.”

We looked at each other. Then I said, “If you were going to withdraw your support, you would have done it by now.” She shrugged. Probably, she conceded. When I asked her why she hadn’t, she shrugged again. I turned it over.

“Trevanian got two dirty orders out under your nose,” I said. “That must hurt.”

She raised a hand. “You know what? Let’s just find ourselves somewhere to sit, you can have a look at the papers you asked for.”

We found ourselves an isolated bench. She opened her briefcase and showed me some of the paperwork on those earlier orders from Trevanian, the ones Dimitri had shepherded through Fettners. She also showed me copies of the End User Certificates. Nigerian. The orders weren’t half the size of the one he seemed to have placed with Haplon. She lingered with some bitterness over her failed attempts to have Channon lean on Dimitri. After fifteen minutes she came to the end of her story. “Channon said I was imagining things. The arms got loaded on a ship bound for Nigeria, the ship sailed, and that was it.”

“They got to Nigeria?”

“According to the paperwork.”

“Then they were re-exported?”

She said that my guess was as good as hers. She lifted her hands, who knows? I had a last rummage through the paperwork, then returned it to her briefcase. She clipped the case closed, and we sat silent awhile. Her earlier troubled mood had returned, she was thoughtful as I walked her across to her car. But when we reached the car, she suddenly pivoted.

“Do you know why Dimitri was murdered?”

“No,” I said, startled.

“Do you know who killed him?”

“What kind of question is that?”

“That’s not any kind of answer.”

“Of course I don’t know.”

She studied me a second. Finally she tugged open the door of her ancient Corvette and tossed in her briefcase. “Back at the office right now, my boss is waiting for me to come and give him the inside story from Haplon. Your story.” She climbed in and wound down the window. “I’m going to tell him you’ve been sidelined at Haplon. And you’d better tell Channon. Neither one of them is going to be impressed.”

I tapped my pocket, the torn page from her notepad, all her carefully prepared questions. I told her I’d get the answers for her. Enough to keep her boss happy, I said.

She hit the ignition. “Speaking as a Customs agent, that sounds just great, Ned.” She pulled hard left on the wheel, looking out into the traffic and offering me a final thought before she pulled away. “Speaking as me, I’m not so sure it’s so great. Dimitri’s dead. And if you had any brains, you’d just lie down and quit.”

CHAPTER 6

On the managerial and sales side of Haplon, Rossiter employed around forty people, thirty in R&D, and then another hundred or more doing the grunt work on the assembly lines and warehouses out back. From the vantage of my third-floor office overlooking the parking lot I had a good view of all arrivals and departures from the premises, and that evening after my meeting with Rita Durranti I stayed at my desk and watched the parking lot gradually empty.

Working late, for me, was not unusual. Paperwork had a way of building up during daylight hours, when I was often traveling, visiting clients, or arranging the Haplon presence at places like Springfield. At least twice a week I stayed till around ten to clear up the backlog, though in truth it wasn’t always necessary. I maintained my nocturnal work pattern in the knowledge that it might one day prove useful should I ever need private, uninterrupted access to anything in the building. On two previous occasions I’d found the cover helpful. This time it was much more than that.

“Home run,” said Gillian Streiss, putting her head around my door. “Coming down?”

When I gestured despairingly across my paper-strewn desk, she shot me a sympathetic smile and went on to the elevator.

Rossiter’s red Lotus was still parked in the reserved bay by the entrance to the lobby, but I hadn’t seen the man himself for over an hour. After shuffling the paperwork around my desk awhile longer, I got up and went out to the hall. It was quiet, but the lights were on down in the big open-plan office where the Haplon sales team was quartered. I strolled along there and looked in. Micky Baker was hunched over his keyboard, his eyes fixed to the screen.

“It’s eight-thirty,” I said. Startled, his head swung around. “No medals for being last one out. Unless you’re e-mailing your mom,” I told him, “shut it down.” Stopping behind him, I leaned forward to read the screen.

He tapped a pen on his notepad. A list of numbers. “Rossiter wanted an update on these export licenses we’ve applied for. I’ve been e-mailing and phoning since four. They just keep jerking me around, passing me up and down the line. Four and a half fucking hours.”

The e-mail Micky was composing, in response to being jerked around, was caustic. Not far short of abusive. Reaching over his shoulder, I touched the screen.

“Delete it.”

Micky groaned.

“If you send that,” I told him, “no one at Commerce is going to get off his butt and reply for a week. Now go home and get some sleep. When you come in tomorrow, rewrite it. And while you’re rewriting, keep it in mind that Commerce grants the licenses. No export licenses, no Haplon. No Haplon, no jobs for you and me.”

He gestured to the screen. “It took me half an hour.”

I looked at him silently. Finally he hung his head and jammed his finger on the
DELETE
.

“Rossiter’s gonna kick my butt,” he muttered. I assured him that Rossiter knew Commerce better than to blame a Haplon employee for any delay. Micky plucked his jacket from the chair. “You’ll tell him I tried, right? You’ll back me up.”

I clapped him on the shoulder and guided him into the hall. When he disappeared toward the elevator, I stepped into my office and crossed to the window. Rossiter’s Lotus hadn’t moved. After a minute, Micky emerged from the lobby below and crossed the parking lot. After watching him drive away, I returned to his desk in the main office. His notepad lay open by the screen.

There were four reference numbers relating to export licenses we’d applied for, and beside each reference number was the name of the buyer, all national departments of defense. Germany, Australia, Pakistan, and Nigeria. The first three I knew about, but the only whisper of an order we had from Nigeria was the approach from Trevanian. I tore a blank page from the notepad and scribbled down the reference number before folding the slip into my pocket and returning to my office.

Another five minutes and Rossiter’s car was one of only six remaining in the parking lot, including my own, and I went down the hall to see what was keeping him. His secretary, Barbara, a notorious martinet, had already left. Rossiter’s door was closed. When I knocked there was no answer, so I tried the door and it opened.

I paused, one hand on the door, and looked across Rossiter’s office to the filing cabinet. He kept his correspondence and details of orders pending in that cabinet. It was tempting. Tempting but risky. I couldn’t afford to have anyone find me in there. While I was thinking it over, there were suddenly voices along the hall behind me. I quickly closed the door, stepped back, and bowed my head over Barbara’s desk calendar. Not a moment too soon. Rossiter bore down on me, trailed by Vincent Juniper, Haplon’s financial controller. Vincent had aged years in the past three months; dealing with the irate bankers out in California was wearing him down. Rossiter didn’t miss a beat.

“Whatever you want, Ned, save it for tomorrow.” He nodded Vincent away, then stepped by me into his office. Gathering up his briefcase and coat, he flicked off the lights, then came out, pressing the lock. “Californians. The goddamn happy people. They’re gonna give me a coronary.”

“Trouble at the new factory?”

“Factory? Great big fuckin’ concrete slab, they haven’t even finished the roof. Now the electrical contractor’s sayin’ he wants an extension on his deadline. Just like the builders got. And Christ, those guys bust their deadline twice. All that new technology they got out there, they can’t even get it done halfway right.”

We walked down the hall as he continued complaining. Contractors. Bankers. The way Rossiter saw it, the entire world was lining up against him. He jabbed the elevator button, then faced me. “Somethin’ you wanted to see me about?”

I mentioned an ongoing problem with the Pakistani order we were working on. I told him it could wait.

When he got into the elevator, I returned to my office and took up a position near the window again. But when Rossiter finally came out of the lobby below, he wasn’t alone, he was with Darren, our rangemaster. They crossed the parking lot together. At the Lotus they stopped. They carried on talking a minute, then Rossiter got in his car and drove off. Darren came back to the building.

I dug my key ring out of my jacket. Apart from my own keys, there were three others, copies I’d made when Rossiter had given me his key ring the previous August and sent me to fetch something from his apartment. I’d gotten copies of his apartment key, his office key, and, on a whim, the key to his Lotus. Now I went down the hall to Rossiter’s office. When I tested the door, it was locked. Fingering the keys, I found the copy, slid it into the lock, turned, and felt a satisfying clunk. After letting myself in, I closed the door and relocked it. Then I drew the blinds and switched on the desk lamp.

The filing cabinet was a tall aluminum piece by a table behind his desk. I opened the middle drawer. Everything in the cabinet was filed alphabetically, the name of the shipment’s final purchaser was generally the main reference in the system. Nigeria. The middle drawer finished at K, so I closed it and tried the next drawer down. The N marker was halfway back. I pulled the divider forward and flicked through the paperwork.

It wasn’t the first time, of course, that I’d taken an uninvited excursion through Rossiter’s correspondence. Haplon product had turned up in some surprising locations over the years, theaters of war where embargoes were purportedly in place, and the company had been on Defense Intelligence’s radar long before I made my entry. Though during my first eight months of employment I hadn’t had great access, once Earl Jacobs quit and I took over as head of Haplon sales, the situation improved out of sight. By the time Trevanian’s order came along, I had a real handle on Rossiter’s modus operandi, the shortcuts he regularly took through U.S. export regulations and Customs procedures. Most of that knowledge I’d gained through my after-hours dips into his aluminum cabinet. It wasn’t so much what he wrote down—he was way too wily to commit himself to paper—it was what he so carefully omitted, or what he told me at our daily meetings that didn’t square with what I read later in the documents from his cabinet.

After a minute, I found it. Nigeria. Ministry of Defense. Opening the folder on Rossiter’s desk, I quickly flicked through the pages. There were fewer than twenty. I replaced the empty folder in the cabinet, switched off the desk lamp, and took the pages into the hall. After relocking the door, I retreated to my office and turned on the photocopier.

I hadn’t copied five pages when Darren suddenly appeared in my doorway.

“Late night?” he said. I looked up and straight back down. I carried on with the photocopying. He leaned against the door frame. “What’s with those two down at the range yesterday?” Trevanian and Lagundi, he meant.

“Just customers,” I said.

“Some customers. Were those slugs you dug outta the sand trap any good to you?” he asked curiously.

After Trevanian and Lagundi had left the plant, I’d returned to our test-firing range and retrieved the bullets she’d fired. I wasn’t aware, at the time, that I’d been noticed. Now I shook my head and stayed silent, but he wouldn’t take the hint.

“That woman got the grouping any tighter,” he said, “she’da been plugging the same damn hole. Man, I seen Marine instructors can’t shoot like that.”

I concentrated on the pages feeding through the copier. When I realized that Darren wasn’t going to move, I asked him if he’d heard from the Springfield rangemaster.

“Haven’t stopped hearing from him. Guy’s on a crusade. Seems like the cops are talking about pulling his licenses. He’s wild. He won’t accept that maybe he screwed up.”

“You think he did?”

“Not a question’a what I think. Guy says he’s even been questioned by the FBI, they’re not too happy someone got his brains blown out at a U.S. arms fair. That shit’s meant to happen in other places. You know, Central America. Not here in the land of whipped cream and apple pie.”

“Why are they coming down on him?”

“They don’t believe in accidents.” When I glanced up, he said, “Put it this way. He’s got a list’a people who used the range. It doesn’t match with what the cops got from their interviews. Some people on his list who shouldn’t be on it. Some not on the list who should be. Plus, he can’t tell them exactly how many rounds were fired, he’s not even definite about weapons used, and calibers. I guess if I were a cop, I’d be thinking same as them. Screwup by the rangemaster.”

“You’re not a cop.”

He laughed. “Right. Which is why I’m actually thinking, Thank fuck it wasn’t me running the Springfield range that day.” As the last page ran through the copier, someone out in the hall called Darren’s name. Registering the voice, I shot a glance behind me down to the parking lot. Rossiter’s Lotus was back in its bay. “Wants to show me his new toy,” Darren explained with a what-can-you-say? kind of smile. He went out to join Rossiter.

My chest felt hollow. My heart was up near my throat.

Scooping up the papers, originals and copies, I crossed to my desk. I was still shoving loose sheets in the drawer when Rossiter came in with Darren.

“You wanna see something?” Rossiter said, hefting a small leather case onto my blotter. Sliding my drawer closed, I sat up as Rossiter flipped open his case. “Now tell me they ain’t special.” He gazed down at the pair of eighteenth-century dueling pistols lying on a bed of black velvet. “Perfect working order.” He took out a pistol and turned it in his hands, admiring the craftsmanship. Darren joined in, congratulating Rossiter on the latest addition to the Rossiter family collection, while I made a few feeble noises of assent.

What had happened, it transpired, was that Rossiter had bought the pistols at auction, then taken them to be reconditioned by a small-arms specialist a few blocks from the Haplon site. The conversation I’d seen earlier between him and Darren in the parking lot was about the pistols. Rossiter had told Darren to wait, then gone to fetch the damn things.

“You see the sticks?” Rossiter asked, lifting the slender ramrods from the mahogany case.

I saw the sticks. And the pistols. And I saw the ampules of gunpowder that he tenderly plucked from the case, and the heavy lead pellets that he passed me one by one. The stolen paperwork was in the drawer, inches beneath his hand. It was torture. The ritualistic admiration of Rossiter’s latest aquisition went on for an age.

“Makes you think, doesn’t it?” Rossiter finally replaced the guns in the case. “Have we ever made anything that beautiful? I mean, has anyone the past fifty years?” When Darren suggested the stealth bomber, Rossiter laughed, then he packed the rest of it away and snapped the case shut. He said he was going to leave the pistols in his office safe till he got the cover note from his insurers at home.

When he exited my office, trailed by Darren, I hung my head. He was going to his office. But I’d relocked his door and closed his filing cabinet. I’d followed the correct procedures. Provided Rossiter didn’t actually open the cabinet and search through the Nigerian paperwork, there was nothing for me to fear. But for the next few minutes I remained anchored to my desk, a knot tightening deep in my gut. The silence went on a long time. Finally I heard Rossiter and Darren talking. They seemed to be talking quite calmly, and I couldn’t sit still any longer. I put my head out and saw them down by the elevator. Rossiter lifted a brow, he looked straight at me. When I smiled he didn’t respond, just got on the elevator with Darren. I went back to my desk. After a minute, I crossed to the window, and saw Rossiter and Darren appear in the parking lot below. Rossiter went to his Lotus, Darren to his Ford pickup, and they each drove away.

I breathed in. I breathed out. Then I pulled out the stolen paperwork, split it into two piles, originals and photocopies, and took the originals down the hall to Rossiter’s office. I located the key on my key ring, slid it into the lock, and turned. The lock clunked, I leaned against the door. It didn’t budge. I pressed my shoulder against it, holding the key tight, but still nothing happened.

I thought, What the hell?

I gave it another try. Same result. Alarmed now, I stepped back and looked at the lock and the door. Then I saw it. Up in the right corner of the door, another keyhole, an old one. It had never been locked any of the other times I’d let myself in for a private look at Rossiter’s files. I turned the key in the bottom lock again, and pressed with my shoulder. Nothing moved.