“Ten million dollars is a lot of good-luck money for one man.”
“Indeed. But to grease a deal like this through the Chinese bureaucracy without endless quibbling-well, that’s quite a bargain, isn’t it?”
“It’s early for Chinese New Year, isn’t it?”
“Now you’re catching on. Unless you can think of some other reason why Stratton would be routing him his money to a numbered account in Macau. From where, I’ll wager, it was immediately transferred to another account at the Bank of Commerce of Labuan.”
“Labuan?”
“Labuan is an island off the coast of Malaysia. A speck of sand, and a great big offshore financial services industry. The bankers of Labuan make the Swiss seem gabby. Basically, it’s where Chinese kleptocrats like to sock away their ill-gotten gains.”
“I had no idea.”
“I’m sure they were counting on that. Good boys and girls don’t know about Labuan. And they certainly don’t wire money there.”
“Christ,” Nick said. “How many people are in on this thing?”
“Impossible to say, though it only takes two countersigners to execute it. One corporate officer-that would be your charming young CFO-and a managing partner from Fairfield. It does seem a little low-rent, the whole thing, but I suppose these are two young men in a hurry. There are a lot of people in a hurry these days. Sure you won’t join me in a drink?”
“Still waiting for my tomato juice,” Nick said. “Seems to be taking an awfully long time.”
“Oh dear,” Hutch said in a low voice. “I should have realized. Doubt it’s ever going to come, Vinnie being your waiter and all. I guess you must be used to this sort of thing.”
“What are you saying?”
Hutch glanced at the waiter and shrugged elaborately. “It’s just that you laid off his brother.”
90
Audrey tracked down Bugbee on his cell phone at the Burger Shack, the place he liked to go for lunch. He could barely hear her. In the background was a cacophony of laughter and clinking plates and bad rock music.
“When are you coming back?” she said several times.
“I’m on lunch.”
“I can tell that. But this is important.”
“What?”
“You’d better get over here.”
“I said it can wait.”
“No, it can’t,” she said.
“I’m at the Burger Shack for the next-”
“See you there,” she said, and she hung up before he could object.
Bugbee quickly got over his pique at having his lunch with the guys-three uniformed officers, all around his age-interrupted.
He excused himself, and he and Audrey found an empty booth.
“That’s it,” he said when Audrey told him about the weapon match. “We got ’em.”
“It’s still tenuous,” she said. “It’s circumstantial.”
He glared. There was a large splotch of ketchup on his hideous tie, which only improved its appearance. “The fuck are you waiting for-Nick Conover’s diary with a special entry for that night saying, I plugged the guy, me and Eddie?”
“We’re connecting dots that I don’t know if the prosecutor’s going to let us connect.”
“Connecting what fucking dots?” he spat out.
She briefly considered asking him to cut out the potty-mouth stuff, but now was not the time. “We know this suggests that Eddie Rinaldi and Nick Conover were behind it.”
“Tell me something I don’t know-”
“Will you shut up for a second, please?” It was worth saying just to see Bugbee’s stunned expression. “The gun that was used to kill Stadler was also used on a no-gun case that Eddie Rinaldi worked six years ago. But does that prove Rinaldi pocketed the gun back in Grand Rapids? The case is still full of holes.”
“Yeah? I don’t think so, and neither do you.”
“Our opinion isn’t the same thing as what’s going to convince the DA to prosecute. Especially in a capital case involving the CEO of a huge corporation and one of his top officers.”
“Tell you something-once we hook our boy Eddie up to a polygraph, he’ll crack.”
“He doesn’t have to submit to a polygraph.”
“If he’s facing a first-degree murder charge and life without parole, believe me, he’ll take it.” He leaned back in the booth, savoring the moment. “This is beautiful. Shit, this is beautiful.” He smiled, and she realized that this was the first time she’d seen him give a genuine smile of pleasure. It looked wrong on his face, didn’t come naturally, looked like a disturbance in the natural order of things. His cheeks creased deeply like heavily starched fabric.
“Conover won’t take a polygraph,” Audrey said. “Let’s face it, we still don’t know which one of them the shooter is,” Audrey said.
“Fuck it. Charge ’em both with first-degree murder, and sort it out later. Whoever comes to the window first gets the deal, that’s how it works.”
“I don’t know if we’re even going to get to that point, if we’ll get a prosecutor to write out a warrant.”
“So you go prosecutor-shopping. Come on. You know how the game works.”
“Noyce really frowns on that.”
“Screw Noyce. This is our case, I told you. Not his.”
“Still,” she said. “I don’t know. I don’t want to mess this up.”
Bugbee started counting on his left hand, starting with his thumb. “We got the soil match, we got the fucking erased surveillance tape, we got Conover’s alarm going off at two A.M., followed by the desperate cell phone call, we got Schizo Man with a history of attacks on the suspect, and now we got a gun match.” He held up five fingers triumphantly. “The fuck else you want? I say we run with it.”
“I want to pass this by Noyce first.”
“You want to run to Daddy?” He shook his head. “Haven’t you figured out that Noyce isn’t our friend?”
“Why do you say that?”
“Take a look. The closer we get to Stratton’s CEO, the harder Noyce’s been fighting us, right? He doesn’t want us taking on the big kahuna. Wouldn’t surprise me if he’s in Stratton’s pocket.”
“Come on.”
“I’m fucking serious. Something’s off about the way that guy’s taking their side.”
“He’s got to be cautious on a case this big.”
“This is way beyond cautious. You notice how when I searched Rinaldi’s condo, total surprise, and all of a sudden a couple of guns are missing from his rack, like someone gave him a heads-up?”
“Or maybe he dumped them after he or Conover murdered Stadler,” Audrey said. “Or Conover called him, told him a team was coming to search Conover’s house, and Eddie races home and disposes of the evidence.”
“Yeah, any of those are possible. Theoretically. Then you notice how Noyce is trying to make life difficult for you, jam up your schedule with other shit so you don’t have time to do this right? Look, Audrey, I don’t trust the guy.”
“He’s my friend, Roy,” she said softly.
“Oh, is he?” Bugbee said. “I wouldn’t be so sure of that.”
She didn’t reply.
91
Dorothy Devries’s mansion on Michigan Avenue in East Fenwick didn’t seem quite as big as Nick remembered it, but was possibly even darker. Outside, the gables and peaked eaves stopped just shy of Addams Family gothic. Inside, wooden floors were stained to a chocolate hue and partly covered with blood red Orientals. The furniture was either a dark mahogany or covered in a dark damask. She kept the curtains drawn, and he remembered her once saying something about how sunlight could bleach the fabrics. The moon glow of her pale skin was the brightest thing in the house.
“Did you say you wanted tea?” she asked, squinting at him. She sat almost motionless in a burgundy-clad Queen Anne’s chair. There was a chandelier above them, which she kept pointedly unlit.