A Spill of Blood Ch. 06

As I continued to gape at her, she finally had the decency to flush. "I didn't like her in your life. As long as she's out of it ... well ... I don't have anything against her personally."

I'll never understand women.

"Oh, and Sydney wants to know when you're back. She's at the hotel." The tone that colored "Sydney" was reminiscent of the one that used to color "Lexie."

I gave up and went for a shower and clean clothes. Then I brought Jess up to date. If I was expecting to be told I was a hero, I was sorely mistaken.

"You're a goddamn idiot!"

Coming from someone who wouldn't stay in the anonymity of a hotel despite a killer roaming the streets, that was rich.

The phone rang.

"Yeah, he's here," Jess said. "Finally."

"They got the girls," Murray told me when I picked up the receiver. "They got some of the crew. The captain wasn't aboard, but they got most, including the first mate. Oh ... also including one attached to a cage with a sex gag in his mouth." That actually got a chuckle out of him. "You may leave a trail of bodies, but you're entertaining; I'll give you that."

I let out a sigh of relief. "Do they have any idea where the captain is?"

"One the crew started singing immediately. The captain went off to meet the boss. And the answer to your next question is, 'He's in the wind.'"

"Lindqvist?"

"Yeah. New Haven won't do anything without evidence, but I tried the Chatwal. He hadn't checked out, but he wasn't there. I'm guessing a call from the ship to the captain, and the two of them booked."

I sighed a Murray-worthy sigh.

"Hey!" he said. "Sixteen women rescued from the life. You can count that as a win. You done good." Another chuckle. "And no more bodies while doing it. What a bonus!"

I was worried about being followed, so even though I knew which hotel Sydney was staying in, I didn't go there directly. I headed home to dump the salt-stiff clothes and pick up replacements for the office.

I came up to the fourth floor of my building and stopped.

Two years ago, right after the Amber implosion, I'd been threatened by a husband I photographed in the back seat of his car with a woman ... a woman not his wife. He'd sworn in all sincerity that "One of these days, when you don't expect it, I'm going to fuck you up so bad you'll wish you was dead." So far, he hadn't, but some precautions had become a habit. One was carrying most of the time instead of occasionally.

A second was using telltales on my door and windows, innocuous pieces of lint that would fall unnoticed if they were opened. But every once in a while, a draft or the super knocking on my door would disturb one, so I had something else.

I couldn't afford a security service in those early months after she took everything. Frankly, I couldn't see any point. They'd just dispatch a guy who'd arrive ten minutes after I was a cripple. I went with field-expedient methods.

A $29.99 motion sensor from Home Depot, a $7 relay from Amazon, and some wire I'd taken from a construction demolition dumpster. After epoxying the contraption into the ceiling fixture—who looks at those?—and swearing up a blue streak for two hours trying to fish wire in the ceiling and down the wall, I had something that wouldn't pass an electrical inspection, but I didn't care.

If you moved in my apartment, the motion sensor triggered the relay. That relay cut the power to the wall outlet in the hall outside my door. I'd dialed the reset on it up to the maximum of an hour. Another few bucks at Home Depot for some spackle and paint, and all traces inside my abode were gone.

The nightlight I had plugged into that outlet was off.

Burned out?

Some atavistic sense was screaming, "No!" I was learning to listen to those warnings. I backed down the stairs. Twenty bucks to Mr. Kim at the corner bodega let me sit on a stool in his place and watch my door. It took an hour and a half of boredom warring with tension. Then I saw a truck-sized shape come out the door and turn down the block.

It occurred to me that my parking garage was in that direction. Driving my car didn't seem advisable suddenly. I wondered if Murray had contacts in the bomb squad.

I called Jess. "Regan's after me. He may go for everyone associated with this case."

"I'll go to the hotel tonight." Quiet acceptance, no argument. Sensible. "He called again and demanded to know where you were."

"Yeah."

I called Sydney. Mitchell wasn't following me because he'd been waiting ahead of me. "I'll be over."

She let me into her room wearing a thick hotel robe. She took in my expression.

"You're tense. What is it?"

"Remember what I said about Regan not wanting everyone to know about millions in dirty money?" She nodded. "Mitchell was waiting at my place."

Her concern turned to outright fear. I hadn't told her what her customers at the party did for a living, but I'd given her some of what happened to Nikki when we'd argued about her leaving. She'd met Mitchell; she believed me. The same fate could be hers if Mitchell came for her. Damn right she was scared.

"What do we do?"

"You hide. I stop Mitchell."

"How?"

"I don't know yet. I have this idea that Regan can be got at, and then he'll call Mitchell off."

She didn't believe that. I could tell. "We need to run, Harry! There's got to be some way to find that money Larry hid. We take that, what you have saved, and what I have saved, and we go to Europe ... Mallorca or maybe the Algarve."

I didn't tell her that abroad was no good, that Bertram and Lindqvist had resources abroad and what I knew was big enough for them to spend them.

She stared at me hopefully. "Can we get Larry's computer? Maybe your cop friend would let us look at it?"

"Maybe he would, but I don't think it will help. I think that money's gone."

It wasn't a no and she took it as a yes. I couldn't tell her that Europe wasn't safe because then I'd have to tell her the rest, and I'd already decided to spare her that. And I didn't tell her that it was all moot because my conscience wouldn't let me run.

She pulled herself together and smiled. I guess that was an elementary ability in her former profession, to smile convincingly no matter what.

"But you're tense. I know just what to do about that."

She undid the knot on the robe and let it fall to the floor. There was nothing underneath but Sydney. Full breasts that somehow still defied gravity, a narrow waist leading the eye down past hips made to cradle you, taking the eye to the dark triangle below. I felt myself respond.

"Come on. I guarantee you're going to be so relaxed by the time I'm done with you."

She drew me to the bed and then undressed me, refusing to let me help. Then she took a scarf. I pulled back as she made to loop it around my head.

"Relax, Harry. Just a blindfold. We can play tie-up games some other time. This is only a little sensory deprivation. I want you to concentrate on how things feel."

Her expression wasn't aggressive or even teasing. I let her tie it around my eyes.

"Lie on your stomach. I'm going to get some oil and give you a back rub."

She was patient and thorough. Occasionally she'd make a quiet comment. "Tight here," as she worked between my shoulder blades. I wanted to groan in pleasure. She pushed lower to the small of my back and down over my butt.

"Are you ticklish on your feet?"

"No" and she continued down my legs to knead the calves looser and then pressed deeply into my arches. It felt like tension was being squeegeed from the top of my body down until it dripped out my toes.

"Still awake?"

I murmured assent.

"Then roll over. I'm going to put you to sleep."

"Hmm?"

"I'm going to give you a very slow blowjob, and I want you to just let yourself fall asleep after."

The buzz of my phone woke me. We'd changed the rollover on the office phone. It went from there to my phone now, not to Jess's. I didn't want her in the middle any more than she already was. It spoke volumes about the nerves under that calm exterior that she didn't argue even a little bit. Now, I was pissed as hell that someone had dragged me out of some great catch-up sleep.

"You have caused us a lot of problems."

The prosody told me the speaker hailed either from deep in the heart of Minnesota or across the Atlantic. I'd only heard it say a dozen sentences or so previously, but I knew which one of those two I'd put my money on.

"I'm trying," I said, coming alert.

"I would like you to stop. What will it take to make that happen?"

Lindqvist waited a moment, and then went on when I didn't say anything.

"Right now, they are merely problems. It is unfortunate what the crew of that ship was doing under the nose of Lindqvist Logistik's management team. There will certainly be a very public in-house investigation, but the responsibility will be placed squarely where it belongs: on the captain's head."

"And I'm guessing that the captain is already long gone with a sizable addition to his bank account?"

"Precisely. Not only him ... the first mate knows that if he insists that story is true, not only will all his legal requirements be taken care of, but a bonus will go to his family, with another substantial payment awaiting his eventual parole. Which leaves us with you to deal with. My partners and I would be interested in knowing what that would require."

"Partners? As in more than one?"

There was a hesitation, then he said easily, "I am informed by one of our employees that you know about Richard Bertram."

"Yeah. Who's the other one?"

"I am pretty sure you know about Jordan Regan."

He was smooth, but I'd heard that hesitation.

"Nice try, but Regan's not a partner. I'm thinking he's the lead salesman, the go-to guy for rustling up clients. But he's not in the C-suite with you guys."

"And what do you base that assertion upon?"

I'd done a lot of thinking on that drive home, and a couple of things that didn't add up one way, added up when figured another.

"He was too tense about that money. What was that for, anyway? Paying off some police or government officials in your Latin American push?"

It was his turn not to answer, so, like him, I went on.

"Whatever. Regan was too tense, and I figure that's because it wasn't his money to lose. See, if he was a partner, why wouldn't he just say, 'Hey, Richard, we got a rat somewhere. Let's smoke him out'? But instead, he's giving me all kinds of orders designed to keep it from Bertram."

"That is hardly—"

"I'm not done. Regan described Everett, Beck, and you as customers. Now, maybe that's because he was trying to cover for you. But the same logic that applied to dealing with Bertram would have applied to you, right? No, a better explanation is that he was out of the loop on who you were. Compartmentalization. Bertram's his contact upward.

"It took me a while to get there, but the final touch was Gibson. Bertram was out of town, but Gibson didn't go to Regan. He knew about him; that much was clear from our conversation. But it's like Regan was just another cog in the organization, and not involved in the security side ... which a partner would be. So, who's your other partner?"

The silence dragged on. I didn't expect him to tell me. He didn't disappoint.

"You are an intelligent man, and clearly a man of action. So, let me add one more alternative to the mixture. Come work for me. I guarantee you will be rich beyond your dreams in a very short amount of time."

"Hmm, how much do you match on a 401(k)?"

He chuckled. "No, I suspected not. So, let me make it clear. You will not find a way to link what was going on aboard the Namibian to me or my partners. Your first option is that we negotiate a reasonable settlement for you to stop. If you do not, then I think you will find that my partners are rather effective. I, of course, am beyond the reach of your law already. No court will extradite me for some speculative charges in the face of the first mate's story and the captain's obvious guilt. In fact, I would be quite surprised if your district attorneys even tried."

Fuck! I bet he was on a private plane within an hour after the Namibian was raided. And people as rich as he have fleets of lawyers to make sure predictions like that come true.

I debated the offer he made ... not debated taking a payoff to be quiet, but agreeing to buy time and then nailing his ass anyway. But I knew I couldn't carry it off.

"Sorry, no dice."

He laughed. "If you had taken the offer, I would have known it was a trap and told my associates to go ahead. I have some sense of you, Mr. Morgan. No, I think it is best we just leave it with the truth, which is a threat. Not one to you only and, therefore, perhaps effective.

"Drop this or they will kill you and anyone they suspect you might have talked to. That includes the girls from the party, your staff, even those police officers. Think about that. Good night." With that, he hung up.

I still hadn't cleaned my gun. I trundled back to the office. Jess was there again. I suppressed my annoyance, but I guess she wasn't the type to sit around a hotel room all day.

"I forgot to say it, but excellent catch on the Namibian's stop off Long Island, by the way. That proved key."

She pinked.

I told her about the call from Lindqvist and my conjectures on Regan's status. Then she got on her computer and started trying to find any hint of who Bertram might be associated with. Lindqvist had said "they" when talking about his stateside partners.

"Do you have any ideas, even wild ones?" she asked after a futile thirty minutes.

"Coco."

She looked startled, then thoughtful. "The women like Kimi are high class, not just people grabbed off the streets," she said. "They're recruited and brought in thinking they have regular jobs. A woman's presence would be reassuring in that."

I nodded. My thinking had gone the same way. "And unlike the other girls, she doesn't seem to be working out of Eroticos or Gallerie. If we can find her, we might get somewhere."

"How do we do that?"

"We get to Regan. He's vulnerable right now because he screwed up and his bosses know it."

She considered it for a long time while I finished cleaning and oiling the .45 that had gone in the drink. I moved on to the 9mm that either sat under my desk or in an ankle holster, once again fretting that the Centennial from my dad was still sitting in police lockup.

Finally, I pulled the little Ruger LC9 off the Tac Mag under Jess's desk. I was surprised to find it was over-oiled. I looked at her.

"I took it to the range," she said, somewhat defensively. "I was nervous about it, but you said I needed to think in terms of 'pull the trigger or die.'"

"I'm glad you did," I said sincerely. "I was meaning to take you, but it's been hectic."

"The guy who showed me how to use it said it's been modified."

"I had the thumb safety removed. Too easy to forget in the moment and that could mean you're dead. Anyway, a little too much oil. Let me show you."

"I think you're right," she said as she watched how I serviced the pistol. "Regan's our way in."

Detective Murray had joined us in the hotel for our confab. Even though the combination of murders and trafficking were being handled above his pay grade, he'd taken a person interest.

It had started with dirty cops, something he hated with a passion. It grew when he saw the pictures the Icaria police sent him of a twenty-eight-year-old woman tied to a bed, her unseeing eyes dull in death. Word of sixteen other women, most of them not even remotely twenty-eight years old, being held as entertainment for a ship's crew up in Connecticut put him over the top.

"The big boys in homicide and vice have it now. They glommed on the minute they realized what cracking this could mean politically," he'd said.

"But you're here."

"Yeah. It's going to be a jurisdiction fight while everyone tries to suck up the credit, including the fibbies horning in, you can bet. And they won't care about the girls so much as getting the top guys because 'Trafficking Czar Arrested' is so much more career-enhancing than 'Woman Rescued.' So it's gonna drag." His stare had been level. "I'm happy with my career right where it is. I only got boys of my own, but those people are somebody's kids and they don't deserve to be collateral damage. We do what we can and we do it now."

He'd gotten on my case almost immediately.

"You can't leave her in the dark. Either she gets the hell out of here, or you tell her what's lurking in the shadows."

And so the three of us—me, Murray, and Jess—had headed over to the hotel where Sydney was holed up, and everybody got the whole story. It left Sydney frightened and revolted, just like I'd predicted. She huddled with a pillow pulled up against her front and watched us in silence.

"I figure Regan's impregnable at home," I said when we got to the present moment. "The powers that be are going to be ultra-cautious about warrants and the like so they don't screw it up for trial. Me sliding in over his wall"—I ignored the eye roll from Murray; he didn't actually protest the legality—"is out. He's got state-of-the-art alarms and Mitchell."

"You call and set up a meet, he'll just turn it into a trap," Murray said. "We need to get him when he's not expecting it but doesn't have his muscle with him."

We contemplated it silently until Sydney said her first words. "Men don't bring other men on dates."

I considered it. Finally, I shook my head.

"I can't see how to do it. Even if the hit squad never reported back that I interfered when they went for you, Mitchell knows you're more than just peripherally involved. He saw you take my arm that day at Emerald's apartment."

"Oh!" she squeaked. Jess looked irritated at that.

"Cut her a break. It was a tense moment," I said. Jess's face smoothed out and she nodded.

"And I'm not bringing another woman into this. One slip up and Regan will have her killed, or use her to trace back to us and then have her killed."

Again, silence descended.

"We watch his place. If he goes out for something without Mitchell, we meet him," Murray finally said.

"Can you put someone watching his house?" I asked Murray.

"No. Brass doesn't like us peons joggling their elbows. I can do some time when I'm not on duty, but that leaves a lot of hours."

"We can all take turns," Jess said.

"No!" Before her temper could flare at me, I went on. "They know what the three of us look like. You don't want Mitchell sliding up in your blind spot." The two women looked apprehensive. "Murray's unknown and is obviously a cop. Not only is that a little bit of immunity, but they're not going to be shocked at some surveillance if they've got moles in the department still." I turned back to Murray. "I'll get someone."

The world of my profession isn't huge and I knew others. I forked out some cash and Regan's place got watched.

The days dragged and boredom set in as people huddled out of sight. The weather turned New York late-fall foul, rain and sleet coming down regularly. Tempers outside got foul. Tempers inside got close to it. Sydney bore the brunt of it. Jess and I were still going into the office; we had a business to run. Murray had a full-time job that was anything but boring. But Sydney was afraid to go out and the hotel walls closed in.

Each evening, she'd pull me into bed for an energetic romp that expelled the frustrations of the day. I wasn't complaining.

It was the women who cracked it.

"Elizabeth Brady," Jess announced.