The Last Witness

by W. E. B. Griffin

  She had never touched it.

  [FIVE]

  Talk about things being bigger in Texas! Badde thought when he saw the first person appear in the open doorway of the aircraft.

  The nicely tanned, long-legged blonde had a full figure with impressive breasts. She wore a short, tight white dress and glittering silver high heels. He guessed she was around Jan’s age.

  With all the skill and ease of a runway model, she smoothly descended the steps and went across the pad. As she hopped into the backseat of the Escalade, swinging in one long leg at a time, her dress rode up her thighs, and Badde watched with great interest as she rotated her hips and tugged it back down.

  My God! That is a good-looking creature!

  Badde then heard the peculiar ring tone of one of two cellular phones that he carried. He had selected the sound of a klaxon, thinking the annoying repetitious note was appropriate for what he called his Go To Hell phone. He gave out that phone’s number—listed as belonging to Urban Shelters LLC—only to his accountant, his three lawyers, and a select few others who were friends or business associates. When any of them called it, the odds were that something was going to hell—or about to.

  He pulled it from his coat pocket. The caller ID showed 3040201.

  Last time a weird number like that came up, it was Yuri.

  And I don’t want to talk to him now.

  He waited for the call to go to voice mail. When there was no message left, he quickly turned off the phone.

  Whoever it was, I can blame the phone being off from still being in flight.

  He looked back to the aircraft. A second passenger had appeared in the doorway.

  Another stunning woman!

  She started down the stairs and was followed by four more fashionably dressed, long-legged women, all but two of them blondes. They also climbed into the Cadillac.

  Is there a mold that these girls come out of, or what?

  The clean-cut brown-skinned young man got back behind the wheel as the shiny black Escalade’s doors closed. The SUV began to move toward a gate that was being opened in the chain-link fence that surrounded the airfield.

  Wonder where they’re going?

  He looked back to the aircraft. Next off was a tall light-brown-skinned man who looked to be in his thirties. He wore crisp slacks and a white dress shirt and a navy blazer. With the exception of a neatly trimmed goatee, his head was almost cleanly shaven. He waved once toward the Escalade. The driver waved back as the SUV began pulling away.

  Now, Baldy here looks like someone important.

  A tall black Ford F-150 four-door pickup with six-inch-high chromed badges on the front fenders that read KING RANCH EDITION then drove onto the pad. It pulled to a stop at the aircraft’s wingtip. Its driver, a beefy Hispanic with wavy black hair and wearing faded blue jeans, black pointed-toe Western boots, a snug black T-shirt, and a dark blazer, hopped out. He looked younger, maybe in his mid-twenties. He was talking into his cell phone, gesticulating angrily with his free hand, as he went to the foot of the stair door.

  I wonder who the chunky cowboy is?

  And why didn’t that important guy go with the hot girls?

  As the tall man came down the steps, the cowboy broke off the call, then held out his right hand and smiled broadly. They shook hands and then walked toward the pickup, talking and nodding as they went. The cowboy then glanced toward the building where Rapp stood watching, then started in that direction as the tall man went to the pickup.

  Well, Santos’s executive assistant called Jan about the airplane picking me up and told her that I’d be met here.

  Guess Cowboy’s the guy.

  There was a pair of plate-glass doors on tracks next to the reception area. They had a motion detector, and when the chunky cowboy approached, the pair slid open. The cowboy looked around the lounge and found only a black man standing there.

  “Excuse me,” the cowboy said. “You’re waiting for Santos, yes?”

  Badde was expecting to hear a strong Mexican accent. It was, instead, surprisingly American.

  Well, like my old man made a point of teaching me when he was mayor, immediately establish the power structure.

  “Yes, I’m Rapp Badde, and I’ve been waiting for a Mr. Santos.” He nodded toward the suitcase. “You want to grab that?” Then he looked out the window toward the important man. “I assume the boss is expecting me.”

  The cowboy glanced toward the pickup and chuckled.

  “Excuse me. Did I say something funny?” H. Rapp Badde, Jr., snapped.

  “Oh, no. Meeting El Jefe is always the highest priority. I’ll fetch your”—he paused, looking at the bag—“is this a knockoff? I’ve never seen pink Louis—”

  “I don’t know what it is,” Badde interrupted, clearly annoyed his luggage would be called into question by anyone, much less a cowboy. “I had to borrow it out of necessity, not that it’s anyone’s business.”

  “It happens, I suppose . . .”

  Badde, not knowing what to make of that, ignored it and walked toward the automatic door, leaving the cowboy to tend to his suitcase. The door whooshed open, and Badde started for the tall Ford pickup.

  As he approached the bald, natty Hispanic, the man turned and had what to Badde looked like a somewhat surprised look.

  “I’m Rapp Badde,” Badde announced formally, offering his hand.

  The man shook it as he wordlessly looked beyond Badde. The cowboy was quickly approaching. The plastic wheels of the suitcase had seized up, and they were grinding noisily across the concrete.

  Badde glanced back, then ignored it.

  The cowboy said, “Hey, Jefe, you want to put this in the back? Is there room for it?”

  “I’ll get it,” the man began, looking at the cowboy curiously. Then he looked at Badde and said, “I’m Robert Garcia, Mr. Badde.”

  What? “Garcia”?

  “I expected to see Santos,” Badde immediately said, as they broke their grip.

  Garcia looks like he’s a twin of that Wop who’s head of the Center City business district.

  Well, Jan did tell me that they call Italian immigrants WOPs because it means With Out Papers. And illegal beaners don’t have papers.

  But this guy’s accent doesn’t have any Mexican in it.

  The man nodded in the direction of the cowboy.

  “I thought you did meet Mike.”

  Badde looked at the cowboy, who was holding out his hand.

  “Mike Santos,” he then said, grinning as he firmly squeezed Badde’s hand. “Pleasure.”

  He’s the one in charge? Damn it!

  “I didn’t know,” Badde began, his arrogant tone making it more a statement than an apology. “I thought Mr. Garcia here . . .”

  “Completely understandable. Happens to us all one time or another,” Santos said evenly. “Please call me Mike. And this ol’ Tejano is my lawyer. You can call him Bobby.”

  “Tay-hawn-oh?” Badde repeated.

  Santos nodded. “A Texan of criollo Spanish descent. His family was here when they still called the place Tejas.”

  Spanish descent!

  That explains why he looks like the Center City Wop’s twin.

  “Me,” Santos went on, “I’m just a wetback. I set foot in Texas only after swimming across the Rio Grande.”

  Badde stared back.

  Garcia laughed out loud.

  “Don’t believe that bullshit,” Garcia said. “He was a snot-nosed thirteen-year-old. The real hardship of his arrival here was having to fly coach on Delta Airlines from Rio de Janeiro. Then, after prep school, he spent four years at TCU chasing ass while pretending to be a business major.”

  Rapp looked between them.

  Prep school?

  I don’t know what to believe.

  They’re treat
ing me like we’ve known each other for years.

  But I know enough to be damn careful—they didn’t get around all this money by being stupid shit kickers.

  And what about those women? I want to ask what that was about, but they haven’t said a word. . . .

  “TCU?” Badde said.

  “Texas Christian,” Garcia explained. “In Fort Worth, thirty miles from here, aka ‘Cowtown, Where the West Begins.’ And, Rapp, for the record, I know that about Mike because I was there every step of the way. We were even in the same fraternity. Then I came to Dallas for law school. Southern Methodist is, if it’s possible, probably more out of control than TCU.”

  Santos then laughed, and slapped Badde on the back.

  “Oh, hell. It’s true. I was in the ranch management program.”

  “Ranch management?”

  Santos nodded, then gestured at the pickup.

  “Let’s get rolling. I need a drink. We can talk on the way.”

  —

  The gate in the chain-link fence rolled opened, and the tall black Ford pickup truck roared through it. Mike Santos was behind the wheel.

  “My family,” Santos explained, “has spreads in Argentina, Brazil, and Colombia. Cattle, mostly. My father wanted to get something going here, so he sent me to boarding school in San Antone—where Bobby and I met in eighth grade—then college. Big ranches are big business, and that ranch management program is like an MBA—an MBA in cow shit.”

  Santos, grinning, glanced over at Badde, who was in the front passenger seat. Bobby Garcia had taken the seat behind Santos, so that he could see Badde when he turned to talk.

  Badde was impressed with the truck. It rode surprisingly comfortably, and its interior had heavy leather and wooden panel accents throughout, giving the cabin the rustic feel of a lodge. There was stitching in the leather that, like the badge on the front fender, read KING RANCH EDITION and had the “Running W” brand that had been, among other things, seared into the hides of countless herds since the ranch’s founding in 1853.

  “Like this King Ranch?” Badde said. “What’s up with that?”

  “King’s is one of the biggest spreads in the world. Takes up damn near all of South Texas. My father wasn’t looking for that—just something big enough down along the border. I oversee my cousins who run it.”

  “So how did you go from that to what you’re doing now?” Badde said. “The private equity?”

  Santos grunted. “You ever smell cow shit, Rapp?”

  Badde, looking out the windshield at the dramatic colorful skyline of downtown Dallas in the near distance, had to think about that. After a long moment he shook his head, then looked at Santos. “Maybe once, as a kid, out in Pennsylvania’s Amish country. If I did, I don’t really remember it.”

  “Well, you’re not missing a damn thing.”

  Badde then snorted.

  “What?” Santos said.

  “I just remembered I did. It was in Lancaster County. In a tiny town called Intercourse.”

  Santos laughed.

  “I’m calling bullshit on that,” Bobby Garcia said from the backseat, but Badde saw that he was grinning.

  Badde turned on his politician’s big toothy smile and shook his head. “No. And get this: Intercourse actually isn’t far from a place called Blue Ball.”

  Garcia now laughed.

  “You’d think it would be far the hell away,” he said.

  “They were dairy cows,” Badde said. “It was a long damn time until I drank milk again after that trip.”

  “There you go,” Santos said. “I decided that I didn’t want to spend a lifetime smelling shit—especially back home. But because I was still a Colombian national and my student visa was all but expired, I had to find something fast so I could legally stay in the States. I wanted to go into venture capital and that got me—got Bobby and me, after starting OneWorld Private Equity Partners—introduced to the Fed’s EB-5 green card program.”

  OneWorld funded a huge part of the casino, Badde thought.

  And is funding part of the new sports complex.

  Each of those to the tune of a hundred million.

  I’d like to get more than the crumbs I’m getting. . . .

  “Speaking of that,” Garcia said, “Yuri says you’re doing good things in Philly with PEGI.”

  Hearing the Russian billionaire businessman’s name always made Badde uncomfortable. Especially in the same sentence as PEGI.

  And he just pronounced “Peggy” right.

  How much do these guys know about Yuri’s involvement? That is, the intimidation beyond the money. He’s made it clear that there are consequences for failing to meet his high expectations.

  “PEGI is working,” Badde said, trying not to overplay it.

  It’s been a pain in the ass. But it is looking like it will work.

  If no one pokes their damn nose in it. . . .

  The Philadelphia Economic Gentrification Initiative was a special program developed—and solely administered—by the city council’s Housing and Urban Development Committee. Specifically by its chairman, one H. Rapp Badde, Jr. He had conceived it after attending an urban-renewal conference with Jan in Bermuda.

  PEGI was helping pave the way for new projects—including those of Yuri Tikhonov. The first had been the Lucky Stars Casino & Entertainment. And soon to begin construction was a new indoor sports and live music coliseum that could fit sixty thousand fans under its retractable roof. It was owned by Diamond Development, forty-nine percent of which was in the hands of Tikhonov. The rest, the fifty-one percent majority, belonged to minority-owned companies such as Urban Ventures LLC, of which Badde quietly had a piece, one much smaller than he preferred.

  “And,” Santos added, “that as mayor, you will make even better things happen. But first you have a hotel to build, yes?”

  Badde met his eyes and said, “I certainly hope so. About being mayor, I mean. And I’m definitely going to build the hotel. Just takes money.”

  And I’m not going to deal with Yuri having a piece of this project.

  “I don’t think there’ll be any trouble finding that money,” Garcia said.

  Santos slowed the truck. Badde saw that they were just shy of downtown proper. A towering stone-faced complex loomed ahead. Before it, centered in a large berm of lush green grass, was a block of granite the size of a city bus. Chiseled in four-foot-tall black roman lettering was: TWO YELLOWROSE PLACE. Badde then saw individual signage for street-level high-end retail stores and restaurants and for a hotel, clearly a luxury one, he’d never heard of.

  Across the street from the complex was an equally impressive high-rise residential building.

  Santos steered the truck into the high-rise’s cobblestone driveway and pulled to a stop before the enormous well-lit front doors. Doormen on either side of the doors were swinging them open, and out marched three stylishly dressed women. One was olive-skinned, one cocoa-skinned, the third ivory-skinned—and all looking like stunning fashion models. They seemed to float across the walkway as they headed toward the revolving door to the bar of a chophouse next door.

  Philadelphia City Councilman H. Rapp Badde, Jr., could not stop himself.

  “Is there not a single ugly woman in this town?” he blurted.

  Santos and Garcia laughed.

  “It’ll take a second to get you your room,” Santos said, “then we can head over there for a little something liquid to cut the trail dust.”

  Their doors were opened by valets in red blazers.

  “Welcome back, Mr. Santos, Mr. Garcia,” one said, and to Badde added, “Welcome, sir.”

  “Yeah,” he replied, flashing his well-practiced politician’s smile.

  IV

  [ONE]

  Little Palm Island, Florida

  Sunday, November 16, 10:01 P.M. />
  Matt, approaching the entrance to the restaurant’s bar, could see Amanda through the big window that overlooked the patio deck. She was standing with Chad at the bar, and it took a moment before she saw him coming up the tiki-torch-lit path. She said something to Chad, who nodded, and then she walked outside to meet Matt.

  Matt went up the short flight of steps to the deck, watching appreciatively as the ocean breeze blew her dress and hair. But then he noticed that there was something in her expression that he couldn’t quite place.

  I know she’s upset. But there’s more to it than just that. . . .

  He reached the top of the steps.

  “Hey, you okay?” he said, leaning forward to kiss her cheek.

  “Chad is ordering our meals now,” she said. “I don’t think I can eat, though. I’m sorry, Matt. I’ve just been sick to my stomach over this.” She paused, glanced out at the ocean for a long moment, then went on: “I know what it’s like to be taken, to be powerless, and cannot get over that that might be happening right now to Maggie.”

  She was anxiously flipping the phone in her hand.

  He looked at that and said, “I’ve been juggling calls, too.”

  “I imagine one was to Jason? Maggie is why he called earlier?”

  I knew she’d pick up on that!

  I’m not going to lie about it—I don’t want to lie to her about anything.

  “Yeah. Something strange is going on with Maggie’s disappearance. He won’t tell me what it is—won’t tell me anything. But he did say he wants to know if we hear from her, which suggests to me that they believe she’s alive.”

  “That’s something, I guess,” she said, with no enthusiasm.

  “You have any luck with anything?”

  “I talked with Mrs. McCain. This afternoon Maggie sent a text to her cousin Emma.”

  “They heard from her? That’s good news.”

  “I don’t think it helped. Especially since Mrs. McCain is more than a little upset that no one can reach Maggie. She used one of those websites that lets you send anonymous texts and e-mails.” Amanda shook her head. “She may have meant well, but it really backfired with her family.”