“And so Harry Langhorne finally met his end?”
“Had you met him?”
“I had. Not a nice person, but what would you expect? Out to save his own skin, like the rest of the scum.”
“And his family?”
“What of them?”
“Did you meet them?”
“Yes, briefly. Geraldine, the wife; Francine and Douglas, the children.”
“You have a good memory.” She eyed the cannula.
“My mind is fine but I smoked too much,” he said in answer to this look. “It was my one weakness, but it’s a big one now come home to roost. That and the beginnings of Parkinson’s.” He held out his hand and she saw it quivering slightly.
“I’m sorry.”
“At my age it’s not unexpected. At some point my mind will go, and that will be that.”
“I hope I can handle all that as well as you can when my time comes.”
“I hope you can, too. You remember how you were, and it’s... not easy.”
“I’m sure.”
“You’re not police or you would have flashed your badge. What’s your interest?”
She took out her ProEye credentials.
He inspected them and nodded. “Good firm. You were a worthy competitor to my old shop, Kroll.”
“Thanks. It was rumored that Langhorne got away with a great deal of the mob’s money. He paid cash for the estate to the tune of five million. But word is there was more, a lot more. And if he invested it over the last thirty years or so, the sums would be far larger.”
“And you’re trying to claw these assets back for clients of ProEye? Who exactly would that be?”
“Confidentiality bars me from telling you. I’m sure you can understand.”
There was a twinkle in his eye now that she didn’t particularly get.
“Oh, I know confidentiality rules better than most. You can’t be working on behalf of the descendants of mobsters. ProEye is a legit outfit, so they wouldn’t have accepted a client seeking to get back ill-gotten gains. So I wonder who the client is?”
“Without giving away too much, perhaps those from whom the mob money was originally taken?”
“That would be a lot of people and entities.”
“Yes it would.”
“And what do you want with me?”
She began the spiel she had practiced on the drive over. “We found out about some of Daniel Pottinger’s business associates. They would be prime suspects in his murder. The fact is Harry Langhorne kept right on being a criminal in the persona of Daniel Pottinger. He was operating on a large scale; his list of known criminal endeavors stretches the globe and goes deep into some of the vilest stuff on earth. And he partnered with some people who had the wherewithal to play in that sandbox.”
Gibson stopped talking and just looked at him. Her heart went out to the man when his broad shoulders slumped and his handsome face collapsed and his breathing accelerated slightly.
“I guess that explains why you’re here, then,” he said without much behind it.
“And please believe me that I would not bother you with this if I had any other viable leads.”
He looked her over once more. “Not to sound sexist or misogynistic, though my generation is guilty of that generally, you don’t strike me as the type to be hunting down the likes of my son.”
Gibson thought of her mommy van outside with the two kiddy car seats inside. “Maybe that’s my superpower,” she said. “Everyone underestimates me to the point that I’m ignored when I shouldn’t be.”
He now looked at her with fresh respect. “I can see that. We had some female agents during my tenure that fit that description precisely. Other agents would tell them to get coffee. The next week they’d trump the same guys on a big bust. They just worked harder.”
“There you go.”
“But even so, you never said what you want from me.”
“Whatever you have on your son and his possible dealings with Harry Langhorne aka Daniel Pottinger.”
“I’ve been out of the game a long time.”
She glanced at his computer screen. “When I came in you were on a site that I use to track stolen assets. On the dark web.”
She eyed the open journal next to the computer. “And it doesn’t look to be just for fun.”
He glanced down at his journal. “It keeps my mind active.”
“Other people do Sudoku and Wordle to keep their brains sharp. You hunt criminals.”
“Don’t get carried away. I just mess around to keep busy. People here play bridge endlessly. I hate card games.”
She looked around. “You also have no ego wall. Diplomas, commendations, awards, photos of you shaking hands with presidents. Nothing to show what you used to do. And I know you have all of those things to show off because I researched you before coming here. You have every award the FBI gives out, plus a slew of other ones from the federal government in general, and five other countries with which you worked on complex multijurisdictional investigations. France and the UK made you an honorary member of the DGSE and MI6, respectively. You’re on the Wall of Fame at Interpol. Four presidents called you to the White House to take a picture for a job well done. But you choose not to display any of that. Now, that doesn’t strike me as a man in retirement looking to the past. It smacks of a person still very much engaged and looking ahead, despite some age-related infirmities.”
He sat back, drumming his fingers on the arm of his chair. “How much time do you have?”
“All the time you need, Mr. Trask.”
Chapter 34
The sight out of the United Airlines jet window was a beautiful, soothing landscape with clusters of homes, some quite large in scope and ambition, but most were small, dulled jewels in a less luxurious chain. And then there were the farms situated along the legendary rolling Virginia hills. There seemed a peace and serenity to all of it.
Clarisse imagined real estate companies would use a drone to film it all and then put these images in their brochures to sell a dream that was only just a dream.
She turned away because the sight — and not the turbulence they were encountering — was making her sick to her stomach.
Dulles International Airport loomed in front of them and the jet touched down and finally slowed. She retrieved her suitcase from baggage claim, confident in her new identity pack: driver’s license, passport, and credit cards; she even had Global Entry based on an interview that had never happened, but a computer only spit out what was put into it. All professionally done and paid for. Easy if you knew where to get such things.
She rented a car, a neat little white convertible, and headed out. She had researched The Plains. It was rural and equal parts poor and chic. But not too many inhabitants. She would be noticed. She did not want to be noticed, at least not right now. But she had no choice.
There was money in the surrounding countryside, some of which she had seen from the air. She had read that Jacqueline Mars, of the Mars candy company, lived in The Plains. She was worth about $40 billion, she had heard, all from making people fat, diabetic, and dead prematurely.
But the town itself was strictly working-class. In May well over fifty thousand people came out to attend the Gold Cup steeplechase here. She imagined the local businesses prospered greatly during that time. Some of the outside dollars would stick here for a bit, like slick leaves on cracked pavement.
She drove slowly past the small pile of clapboard and shingles that Daryl Oxblood called home. It was a cracker box with a failing foundation, an adjacent lean-to where a dirty tan Ford F-150 sat, and a picket fence that was no longer white and no longer all standing up. Except for the truck, the place looked deserted. There was no smoke coming from the brick chimney, though the day was cold and windy. No lights on that she could see. The fenced-in paddock was empty.