“I already-”
Ling held up his hand to shut me up. He was polite about it. “If you don’t mind.”
“I am an accountant,” Harvey said. “I handle money, typically other people’s money. I am not responsible for where it goes or what it is used for after it leaves my hands.”
Good answer. We hadn’t even coordinated.
“Do you do business with drug cartels? Because that’s where we usually see bills bundled that way.”
“I certainly do not.”
Ling nestled back against the couch, as relaxed as if he were sitting in his underwear at home watching The Untouchables on DVD, or whatever his tastes ran to. Maybe Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure. “By the way, you both understand that you can go to prison for lying to us, right?”
“Title 18,” Harvey said. “United States Code, Section 1001, makes it a crime to knowingly and willfully make any materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent statement or representation in any matter-”
“That’s the one. Let’s talk about motive. That’s really the only part I don’t get, although, personally, I think it all comes back to Rachel.”
“Rachel is not part of this.” Harvey’s answer came out in a high-pitched voice, too fast to be the truth.
Ling noticed, too, and then he came out with his ace in the hole. He started pulling pictures out of his file and passing them over to Harvey, watching Harvey’s face the whole time. They were black-and-white surveillance photos, the kind divorce lawyers get from private investigators who do that sort of work. The only source I could think of was Susan Fratello. Maybe she had finally gotten fed up with Roger’s serial philandering.
The first showed Rachel kissing Roger in the front seat of a car. Ling put down a second and a third. Harvey’s right leg twitched enough to send the pages on his lap sliding to the floor. I reached down and trapped them against his shin, and I saw it in his face. He wouldn’t last much longer.
I collected all the exhibits and handed them back to Ling. “We get the idea.”
“Maybe she came to you and asked for help in getting Roger out of harm’s way.”
“That is not the case.” Harvey’s forehead was starting to glisten. His breathing was shallower. “Rachel is not part of this.”
“Did I miss something,” I asked, “or did you gentlemen articulate at some point exactly what it is that you want?”
Southern stared at Harvey. “He knows what we want.”
“Then explain it to me.”
“We want your partner here to tell us where to find Fratello so we can drag his ass home and nail him for the murder of Special Agent Walter Herald.”
“Excuse me? Murder?”
Ling was reassembling his file. “We believe Roger was involved in the murder of an undercover officer named Walter Herald. Walt was Special Agent Southern’s partner.”
Gauging the look on Southern’s face, had I tried to express condolences, he would have pulled out his service weapon and shot me. “Roger Fratello killed your partner?”
“Walt was undercover at Betelco for nine months. He approached Roger about flipping on his scumbag partners. After he agreed to do it, the cocksucker turned around and told them about Walt, and they killed him. We never did find Walt’s head or his hands.”
No wonder he was so pissed off. “So, the Russians killed him?”
Southern shot right back. “Anyone who was involved in the conspiracy to kill or cover up the murder of a federal officer is in deep shit.” He was talking to me and staring at Harvey. “Anyone in that position would be well advised to cut a deal and spill his guts rather than go down for felony murder.”
I put myself between Harvey and Southern. “Are you planning on taking him in?” Neither man made a move, which meant the answer was no.
“Here’s the thing,” Ling said. “One of the chief beneficiaries of Walt’s murder was Rachel. After his body turned up, no one wanted to testify. We couldn’t bring any indictments.”
Harvey looked at him. “Rachel wasn’t the only beneficiary.”
“That’s true.” Ling didn’t argue with him. “But you’re in with some bad people on this one. You don’t want to take the heat for them, and you don’t want to be screwing with the Russian mafiya.”
“We’ll certainly take that under advisement,” I said. “Can I show you to the door?”
“We’ll find it.” Ling was his affable self as he stood to button his jacket. But Southern had one last shot to take. “An inmate in a wheelchair has a hard time taking care of himself in prison.” He stared down hard at Harvey. “All kinds of bad things happen to gimps in the can.”
I walked Ling and Southern to the door anyway, and watched them to their car. After they had pulled away, gone down the street, and turned the corner, I went back to the office. Harvey had moved back to his wheelchair. His chin was resting on the collar of flesh that had formed around his neck in the past year or so. It made him look overly jowly. That the stakes had taken a gigantic leap in the past hour had not been lost on him. He was clearly shaken.
“All right, Harvey. I need to know the truth. Did you have anything to do with the murder of that agent?”
He was horrified that I would ask such a thing, but my new policy was to be thorough. I was tired of being surprised.
“Yes or no?”
“No.”
“What about Rachel? She and Roger had a thing. Susan Fratello also thinks she was in bed with the Russians.”
“In bed with the Russians?”
“Not in bed with them.” At least I didn’t think so. “She told me Rachel brought the Russians into Betelco as investors. Does that sound right to you?”
He looked up at me. I could see he didn’t want to think it could be true. I could also see that he wasn’t sure.
“We have to ask her,” I said. “You have to tell me where she is so I can find her and bring her back here.”
“I do not know where she is.”
“Harvey, you don’t want her out there alone, running from Drazen and possibly the FBI.”
“No.” He shook his head. “I do not. I wish I could send you to her, but I made her promise not to tell me where she was going. She is supposed to call when she gets settled somewhere.”
“All right.” I went over to the couch where Ling had been lounging and pulled my casework out from under the cushion. I found my backpack and stuffed everything into it.
“Where are you going?”
“I’m going to see Felix. I have him working on something to find Rachel. The three of us need to sit down and pool ideas and resources. That’s the only way I see this working-all three of us together.” I reached under the couch and coaxed out my laptop. My backpack had just enough room left for it. Even so, it took me four tries to get the flap zipped up. I was ready to go, but I had one item still open. Harvey had rolled his chair to within arm’s reach of the teapot. I helped him pour a cup.
“You have to tell me,” I said, “because you promised. What is it about this woman that would make you act this way? As your friend, I would like to know. As a woman, I would really like to know.”
“I am not sure I can explain it to you.”
“You need to try, Harvey, before I go and find her.”
He set the saucer on his thigh. It had a design on it that looked like pink rosebuds, and it occurred to me that Rachel had probably picked it out. He balanced the saucer on the cup and looked at me.
“I asked her to dance and she said yes.”
“That’s it?”
He sat back, and his gaze drifted to that tarnished tin ceiling. He seemed to be looking for his words up there.
“There is a point in one’s life where it becomes impossible not to look back and say, my life has not worked out. It is neither here nor there. One cannot change what he is, but realizing what he is inevitably colors expectations, what he might expect his life to become. I learned to be satisfied with very little. One day, I met Rachel. I asked her to dance with me. I expected her to say no, but she said yes. When I asked her to dinner, she said yes. When I asked her to marry me, she said yes.”