The Dark Tide Free for a Limited Time (33 page)

“I was placed on disciplinary leave,” Hauck said at Arcadia, warming his fingers around his coffee cup.

Karen had called him an hour earlier. She’d told him she had something important to show him. He met her in town.

“What about your job?” she asked.

“I’m not sure.” Hauck let out a breath of resignation. “I’m not exactly up for Officer of the Year. I told them everything,” he said, then smiled. “The whole shebang. There’ll be a review. The problem is, I didn’t help my case with what I let go on down in New Jersey. Still, we have the hit-and-runs…. I’m pretty sure Pappy Raymond will testify it was Dietz who forced him to back off the tankers. That’ll have to do—until something else plays out.”

“I’m sorry,” Karen said. She placed a hand on his. Her eyes were sparkling, round. And they came with a smile. “But I think I may be able to help you, Lieutenant.”

“What do you mean?” His heartbeat picked up, looking at her.

She grinned. “Something else played out.”

Karen reached inside her bag. “A present. From Charlie. He left it for me to find. He mentioned something about it when he was walking me back to the boat on the island, about things I would want to know if anything happened to him. About the truth being somewhere inside his heart. I thought he was just babbling. I never even gave it a second thought until I saw it.”

“Saw what?”

“The heart.” Karen beamed triumphantly. “Charlie’s Mustang, Ty. His
baby.
”

She held out the phone. He looked at her a bit uncomprehendingly.

“It was taped inside the rear bumper of his car. That’s why he didn’t want me to get rid of it. He had it hidden there all along. It’s what he wanted me to find.”

“What, Karen?”

She shrugged. “I wasn’t sure either. So I checked through the entire contact log. It didn’t tell me much. Maybe you’ll find a number or two you could trace. Then I thought, a cell phone—
pictures.
Maybe he had some photos in there, you know, implicating someone. There had to be some reason for him to have hidden it there. So I went into Media…into Camera.” Karen flipped open the phone. “But there wasn’t anything there either.”

Hauck took it. “I can have someone go through it at the lab.”

“Don’t have to, Lieutenant—I found it! It was a voice recording. I never even knew these things did that, but it was there, next to Camera. So I clicked.” Karen took back the phone and scrolled into Voice Recording. “
Here.
Here’s your something else, Ty. A present from Charlie. Straight from the grave.”

Hauck looked at her. “You don’t seem very pleased about it, Karen.”

“Just listen.” She pressed the prompt.

A tinny voice came on.
“You think I like having to be here.”

Hauck looked at Karen and Karen said, “That’s Charles.”

“You think I like the predicament that I’m in. But I’m in it. And I can’t let it go on.”

“No,”
a second voice replied. This one Hauck was sure he’d heard somewhere before.
“We’re in it together, Charles.”

Karen looked at him, the shock evaporated, replaced by a glint of vindication. “That’s Saul Lennick.”

Hauck blinked.

The recording continued.
“That’s the whole problem, Charles. You think you’re the only one whose life you’re going to drag down because of your own bungling. I’m in this straight as you. You knew the stakes here. You knew who these people are. You want to play at the big table, Charles, you’ve got to put up the chips.”

“I got a holiday card back, Saul. Where the hell else could it have come from? For God’s sake, my kids’ faces were cut out.”

“And I have grandchildren, Charles. You think you’re the only one whose neck is on the line?”
A pause.
“I told you what to do. I told you how to handle this. I told you you had to shut up that redneck fuck down there. Now what?”

“It’s too late,”
Charles replied with a sigh.
“The bank, they already suspect—”

“I can handle the bank, Charles! But you…you have to clean up your own mess. If not, I assure you there are other ways, Charles.”

“What other ways?”

“He’s got a boy, I’m told, who lives up here.”

Pause.

“It’s called leverage, Charles. A concept you seemed to grasp quite clearly when it came to taking us down the well.”

“He’s just an old geezer, Saul.”

“He’s going to the press, Charles. You want them sticking their noses into some national-security story and finding out
what they will? I’ll make sure the old man doesn’t talk. I’ve got guys who specialize in this kind of thing. You clean up your balance sheet, Charles. We’ve got a month. A month, Charles, no more fuckups. You understand what I’m saying, Charles? You’re not the only one with his head in the noose here.”

A hushed reply.
“I get it, Saul.”

Hauck stared at Karen.

“It was Saul,”
she said, tears fighting their way into her eyes. “Dietz, Hodges—they work for him.”

He covered her hand. “I’m sorry, Karen.”

A sadness darkened Karen’s face. “Charlie loved him, Ty. Saul was there at every turn in our lives. Like an older brother to him.” She clenched her teeth. “He fucking spoke at Charlie’s memorial. And he could do this to him…. It was
Saul,
Ty. Jesus Christ, I even went to him when the Archer people came. When Sam got accosted. It makes me sick.”

Hauck squeezed.

“I went to him, Ty—before we left. I didn’t tell him exactly where I was going, but maybe he could have put it together.” Her face was ashen. “Maybe we were followed, I don’t know.”

“You didn’t do anything wrong, Karen.”

“You’re the one who said we led them to him.” She lifted the phone. “This is what they were looking for when they trashed the boat. Charles could have told him he had evidence. Before the bombing. Insurance. Then somehow they found out he was alive.”

She let out a breath, one filled with a feeling of betrayal and anger. “So what are we going to do?”

“You’re going to go home,” Hauck said. He looked at her firmly. “I want you to go and pack some clothes and wait for me to come over. If these people followed us to Charles, they must also know that you met with him there.”

“Okay. What about you?”

He reached for the cell phone. “I’m going home to make a
copy of this, just in case. Then I’m going to call Fitzpatrick. I’ll have a warrant for them by tomorrow. Before this goes one step further.”

“They killed Charles,” Karen said, her fists curling slightly. She handed the phone over. “Make it worth something, Ty. Charlie wanted me to have this. Don’t let them win.”

“I promise, they won’t.”

Karen drove home.

Her fingers trembled on the wheel. Her stomach had never felt quite so hollow or so uncertain. Was she in danger now?

How could Saul have done this to her? To Charles?

Someone she’d trusted like family over the past ten years. Someone she’d run to for support herself. It almost made her retch. He had lied to her. He had used her to get to Charlie, just as he’d used her husband. And Karen knew she had brought it on herself. She suddenly felt complicit in everything that had happened.

Even in Charlie’s death.

Her mind flashed to Saul, standing up at the memorial, speaking so lovingly about Charles. How it must have amused him, Karen seethed, for fate to have intervened so beautifully. To get such a potential liability out of the way.

And all the while Charlie was alive.

Did Charlie know? Did he ever realize who it was who was after him? He thought it was his investors, in retribution.
These
are bad people, Karen….
But Dietz and Hodges, they worked for Saul. All along it was just his frightened longtime partner. Trying to protect his own cowardly ass.

Oh, Charlie, you always did get it wrong, didn’t you?

She turned onto Shore, heading toward the water. She thought of going straight to Paula’s but then remembered what Ty had told her. She turned onto Sea Wall. No sign of anybody. She pulled the Lexus into the driveway of her house.

The house lights were off.

Karen hurried in through the entrance off the garage and flicked on a light as soon as she got into the kitchen.

Immediately something didn’t feel right.

“Tobey!”
she called. She straightened the mail she’d left on the kitchen island. A few bills and catalogs. It always felt a little different with Alex and Sam out of the house. Since Charlie was gone. Coming back to a darkened house.

She called again, “
Tobey?
Hey, guy?” He was usually scratching at the door.

No answer.

Karen removed a bottle of water from the fridge and went into the house with the mail.

Suddenly she heard the dog—but somewhere distant, yelping.

The office, upstairs? Karen stopped, thought back. Hadn’t she left him in the kitchen when she went out?

She headed through the house, following the sound of the dog. She flicked on a light near the front door.

An icy jolt traveled up her spine.

Saul Lennick sat facing her in a living-room chair, legs crossed.

“Hello, Karen.”

Her heart crawled up her throat. She looked back, frozen, the mail falling to the floor.

“What the hell are you doing here, Saul?”

“Come over here and sit down.” He motioned, patting the cushions of the couch next to him.

“What are you doing here?”
Karen asked again, a tremor of fear tingling across her skin.

Something in her shouted that she should immediately run. She was near the door.
Get out of here, Karen. Now.
Holding her breath, her gaze darted toward the front door.

“Sit down, Karen,” Lennick said again. “Don’t even think of leaving. I’m afraid that’s not in the cards.”

A figure stepped out of the shadows from down the hallway to her office, where Tobey was loudly barking.

Karen froze. “What do you want, Saul?”

“We have a few things to go over, you and I, don’t we, dear?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Saul.”

“Let’s not pretend, shall we? We both know you saw Charles. And now we both know he’s dead. Finally dead, Karen. C’mon….” He patted the couch as if he was coaxing over a niece or nephew. “Sit across from me, dear.”

“Don’t call me ‘dear,’ Saul.” Karen glared at him. “I know what you’ve done.”

“What I’ve done?” Lennick’s fingers locked together. The avuncular warmth in his eyes dimmed. “What I’m asking you isn’t a request, Karen.” The man down the corridor moved toward her. He was tall, wearing a beach shirt, his hair gathered up in back in one of those short ponytails. Somehow she thought she’d seen him before.

“I said come here.”

Her heart starting to pound, Karen moved toward him slowly. Her mind flashed to Ty. How could she get word to him? What were they going to do with her? She lowered herself onto the couch where Lennick had indicated.

He smiled. “I want you to try to conceptualize, Karen, just what the figure ‘a billion’ really means. If it were time, a million seconds would be about eleven and a half days.
A billion,
Karen—that’s over
thirty-one years
! A trillion—” Lennick’s eyes lit up. “Well, that’s hard to even contemplate—thirty-one
thousand
years.”

Karen looked at him nervously. “Why are you telling me this, Saul?”

“
Why?
Do you have any idea just how much money is on deposit offshore in banks on Grand Cayman and in the British Virgin Islands, Karen? It’s about 1.6 trillion dollars. Hard to imagine just what that is—more than a third of all the cash deposits in the United States. It’s almost as much as the GNP of Britain or France, Karen. The ‘turquoise economy,’ as it’s referred to. So tell me, Karen, a sum so vast, so consequential, how can it be wrong?”

“What is it you’re trying to justify to me, Saul?”

“Justify.”
He was wearing a brown cashmere V-neck sweater, a white dress shirt underneath. He leaned forward, elbows resting on his knees. “I don’t have to justify anything to you, Karen. Or to Charles. I have ten Charleses. Each with sums under investments just as large. Do you have any idea who we represent? You could Google them, Karen, if you wished, and find some of the most prominent and influential people in the world. Names you would know. Important families, Karen, tycoons,
others…”

“
Criminals,
Saul!”

“Criminals?” He laughed. “We don’t launder money, Karen. We invest it. When it comes to us, whether from the sale of an Old Master painting or from a trust in Liechtenstein, it’s just plain old cash, Karen. As green as yours or mine. You don’t judge cash, Karen. Even Charlie would have told you that. You multiply it. You invest it.”

“You had Charles killed, Saul! He loved you!”

Saul smiled, as if amused. “Charlie
needed
me, Karen. Just as, for the purpose of what he did, I needed him.”

“You’re a snake, Saul!” Tears trembled in Karen’s eyes. “How is it I could be hearing you like this? How could I have gotten it so wrong?”

“What do you want me to admit, Karen? That I’ve done things? I’ve had to, Karen. So did Charles. You think he was such a saint? He defrauded banks. He falsified his accounts—”

“You had that boy killed, Saul, in Greenwich.”

“
I
had him killed?
I
kept fucking around with those tankers?” Lennick’s face grew taut. “
He lost over a billion dollars of their fucking money, Karen!
He was playing a shell game with his own bank loans. Loans I set up.
I
killed him? What choice did we have, Karen? What do you think these people do? Pat you on the back? Tell you, ‘Jolly good run of it, we’ll do better next time’? We’re all at risk here, Karen. Anyone who plays this game. Not just Charles.”

Karen glared at him. “So who was
Archer,
Saul? Who was that man in the back of Samantha’s car? Did they come from you? You bastard, you used me. You used my children, Saul. You used Sam. To get to my husband, your friend.
To kill him, Saul.”

He nodded, a bit guiltily, but his eyes were cold and dull. “Yes, I used you, Karen. Once we discovered that Charles was somehow alive. Once we realized that all the fees that had remained in his accounts offshore after he supposedly died had been withdrawn. Who else could it have been? Then I found that note sheet on his desk with the numbers of that safe-deposit box. I had to find out what was in them, Karen. We weren’t getting anywhere tracing the accounts. So we tried to frighten you a bit, that’s all. Put you in play, in the hope, slim as it was, that Charles might contact you. There was no other choice, Karen. You can’t blame me for that.”

“You preyed on me?” Karen gasped, her eyes wide.
Why, Saul, why
? “You were like a brother to him. You got up and eulogized him at his memorial—”

“He lost over a billion dollars of their money, Karen!”

“No.” She gazed at him, this man who had always seemed so important, so wielding of control. And in a strange way, she suddenly felt she was stronger than him, no matter who was standing behind her. No matter what he might do. “It was never, ever about the money, was it, Saul?”

His face softened. He didn’t even try to hide it. “No.”

“It wasn’t all that missing money you were looking for, why your people trashed his boat.” Karen smiled. “Did you find it, Saul?”

“We found whatever we needed, Karen.”

“No.” Karen shook her head, emboldened. “I think not. He beat you, Saul. You may not realize it, but he did. You had that young boy killed. To protect your own interests. To keep silent what his father had managed to find out. Because you were be
hind it all, weren’t you, Saul? The big, important man pulling all the strings. But then when you realized that Charlie’s accounts had been drawn down, you suddenly understood he was alive. That he was out there, right, Saul? Your friend. Your partner. Who knew the truth about you, right?”

Karen chuckled. “You’re pathetic, Saul. You didn’t kill him for money. That might even give you some dignity. You had him killed out of cowardice, Saul—fear. Because he had the goods on you and you couldn’t trust him. Because one day he might testify. And it was like a ticking bomb. You would never know when. One day, when he simply got tired of running…What do they call that, Saul, in business circles? A deferred liability?”

“A billion dollars, Karen!
I gave him every chance. I put my life on the line for him—
my own grandkids’ lives!
No—I couldn’t have that hanging over me, Karen. I could no longer trust him. Not after what he’d done. One day, when he got tired, tired of running, he could just come in, make a deal.” Saul’s gray eyebrows narrowed. “You get used to it, Karen. Influence, power. I’m truly sorry if when you look at me, you don’t like what you see.”

“What I see
?” She stared at him, eyes glistening with angry tears. “What I see isn’t someone powerful, Saul. I see someone old—and scared. And pathetic. But guess what?
He won.
Charles won, Saul. You knew he had something on you. That’s why you’re here now, isn’t it? To find out just what I know. Well, here it is, Saul, you fucking, cowardly bastard: He made a tape. Of your voice, Saul. Your clear, conspiring voice going over what you were getting ready to do to that boy. How’d you say it? With your people, who take care of these things? And right now—and I hope you find the same amusement I do in this, Saul—that tape is in the hands of the police, and they’re swearing out a warrant against you. So whatever you and your lackeys had in mind to do to me, there’s no point anymore. Even you can see that, Saul, not that that would cause you to lose even an
hour of sleep. It’s too late.
They know.
They know it’s you, Saul. They already do.”

Karen stared with a fierceness burning in her eyes. And for a second, Saul looked a little weak, unsure of what to do now, the arrogance melting. She waited for the composure to crack on Lennick’s face.

It didn’t.

Instead he shrugged and his lips curled into a smile. “You don’t mean that detective friend of yours, Karen. Hauck?”

Karen’s glare remained on him, but in her stomach a worm of fear began to squirm through.

“Because if that’s what you had in mind, I’m afraid he’s already been taken care of, Karen. Good cop, though—dogged. Seems to genuinely care about you, too.” Saul stood up, glanced at his watch, and sighed.

“Unfortunately, I don’t think he’s even alive now, as we speak.”