Chasing Clay (The DeWitt Agency Files Book 3)

by Lance Charnes

  This doesn’t make any sense to me. “This is like beer money to you guys. Two federal agencies dickering over a few grand? What, did you spend it all on weed and hookers?”

  Molina growls, “We’re not the Secret Service.”

  Talbot makes a strangling sound. “This comes out of the black budget.” Meaning, how they fund all their black-ops capers. “It’s all allocated. We’ll have to take it out of someone else’s hide, and that’s a huge pain in the ass.”

  I shrug. “Do it yourself then. Though, something tells me the reason you agreed to this setup in the first place is that you can’t.”

  Talbot rounds on me. “Damn straight. It was hard enough when it was Thailand. It’s impossible in Myanmar. They’ll never let us send in a chopper and an SRT to poke around unsupervised. If we’re supervised, they won’t let us see anything.”

  Medina asks me, “You know what’s in there, right?”

  “The Shan State Army?” One of the bazillion ethnic militias infesting northern Myanmar.

  He gives me an empty smile. “We can deal with the Shan. That area you’re talking about is the United Wa State Army’s turf. They fund themselves selling heroin and meth. They don’t want us there. Plenty of people in the government on both sides of the line make money off that. They don’t want us there.”

  I guess I should’ve spent less time on geography and more on the political situation around Nam Ton. The only thing scarier than a mafia running drugs is a rebel army running drugs. This is normally when I’d bow out, but I keep seeing that letter with the magic words early termination. Rock, meet hard place.

  I say, “If that’s how it is, then both of you need us—if you want to close your cases.” I get into a short staring contest with Medina. “I know what Talbot wants. Why are you here?”

  Medina flicks a glance at Allyson, then shifts to glare straight at me. “We want the asshole behind the super-smack. We’ve gotta stop it coming here. Find the pots, maybe you find him too.”

  I’m not so sure about that—if there’s an actual guy behind this, he probably has minions to handle chores like packing and shipping. Besides, I’m not too anxious to meet a Burmese Scarface. “Got it.”

  Talbot stares out the windshield. His fingertips drum an angry rhythm on the steering wheel. Medina crosses his arms and glooms at me.

  Allyson says, “Mr. Friedrich, if you could wait in the—”

  I hold up a hand. I’ve got an idea. “Talbot, I’ve come through for you, right?” He nods. “Have I ever fed you bad intel?” He shakes his head. “Okay. You know I’m on the level. You know I’ll do what I say I’ll do. Right?” After a while, a nod. “Medina. Talbot’s guys got the big stack of smack and all you people got are a couple art geeks and some totally pissed-off millionaires. Why isn’t Carruthers here? Somebody chew his ass off?” Medina snarls at me. “All we need is a little money here and I can finish this off for both of you. Talbot, how much cash did you seize Tuesday night?”

  He sighs. “A hundred forty grand and some change.”

  “Think about how you got that money.” I lean in. “You got hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of investigative services for free.” I switch to Medina. “How much of what you busted Bandineau and Montford for did you get from me? Did you have anything on them before you tripped over me?” Of course, he doesn’t answer. “Guys. For a few thousand more, you get your case wrapped up. The cost won’t be as much as what you seized the other day. Think of this as an investment. In this case.” Push harder? Sure. “In your career.”

  Talbot’s eyes close. After a long ten-count, he blows out a lungful of air. “It’s too damn early in the morning to deal with this.” He sags into his seat. “Talk to me.”

  I throw a glance at Allyson: your turn. She thrusts a finger toward the Audi.

  I pace in circles for a while before I get back in the SUV. It’s still cold, but the activity helps clear out my head and gets my circulation going. Once inside, I get a good view of the negotiations through our windshield and Talbot’s. There’s a lot of intense discussion, hand gestures, shaking heads, nodding heads, pointing fingers. At one point, I get a text from Allyson: Miss Kendicott’s daily rate?

  Why does she need to know that? Good thing I asked about it the first day we met. $150/hr $800/day. Yes, she gets less than I do. Crime does pay.

  Allyson steps out of the Crown Vic after what seems like half of forever. She gestures to me to come out. I meet her in the same spot as before.

  She says, “I believe we’ve come to an agreement. You may not like it, but it’s the best we can expect.”

  Oh, Allyson, what did you do? “What is it?”

  “They’ll approve your expedition to Thailand. The agents are still arguing over how to share the cost. You’re to leave on the nineteenth.” That’s Sunday, two days from now. “I insisted that you fly business class unless they want to send you on a government aircraft. They resisted, so we’ll split the airfare between us. To finance that, I’ll need to rescind your pay for the six days you weren’t actively working on the project since 27th May.”

  “What?” Okay, I wasn’t working very hard, but I was getting heartburn every day.

  “It’s either that, or you spend fifteen hours in a coach seat in the rear of the aircraft. I wouldn’t wish that on a war criminal. You’ll still get your usual €100 retainer for those days.”

  I’ll be a little ahead of where I’d be if I was selling coffee. Still, it pisses me off. I bet she won’t give back her cut. “What else?”

  She glances toward the Crown Vic. Talbot’s watching us like we’re the Super Bowl; Medina’s a dark shape behind him. Her jaw hardens for a moment. “They won’t approve a local associate, even at a reduced rate. It’s something about paying for a third-party non-citizen that, frankly, sounds suspicious to me, but they wouldn’t—”

  “Wait, wait, wait.” This is worse than the pay clawback. “You can’t seriously be considering sending me into the jungle by myself. I can’t—”

  “Let. Me. Finish.” The steel in her voice cuts through my vocal cords. “I know you can’t operate there independently. Agent Talbot will approve sending another U.S. citizen with you for support. It so happens you’re already acquainted with someone qualified to help.” Her left eyebrow arches.

  “Savannah.”

  Her icecap smile flashes by. “Yes. As you were so quick to inform me, she’s familiar with the area and knows the language. She also costs far less than an associate, which both men find gratifying. And I doubt you’ll find it unpleasant to spend time with her in the tropics.”

  Maybe if we were on the beach in Phuket. “Have you forgotten the part about her leaking information to Cort and almost sinking the project?”

  “Of course not. Mr. Cort is now in a holding cell. By the time he’s released, you and Miss Kendicott will be in Thailand. Do whatever you must to keep her away from her phone. I’m certain that by now you know several ways to distract her.” She says all this completely deadpan, so I can’t tell if she’s turning my crank.

  “Let’s hope she doesn’t have an international roaming plan. Talbot needs to square things with my PO so I don’t have to try to report while I’m gone.”

  “I mentioned that to him already. Do you object to anything you’ve heard so far?”

  “I object to a lot of it, but it probably doesn’t matter much. How long do I have?”

  Allyson stares at me coolly for several seconds that get longer as they go by. “The original deadline is in place. Your last day is the first of July. Do you agree to proceed under these conditions?”

  Fourteen days from now. Tomorrow’s wasted. Three days in transit. And I have to trust Savannah to lead me through a jungle full of meth-cooking militias.

  But: freedom.

  Rock, meet hard place. Again.

  “I’m in.”

  Chapter 43

  9 DAYS LEFT

  I wake at 2
:18, groggy and not entirely certain where I am. The ceiling fan makes a sound like sandpaper on metal. There’s just enough light leaking through the curtains to show me the ghost of our hotel room: spotless, surprisingly large, no A/C, warm, stuffy.

  Savannah and I fell asleep holding hands on top of the low double bed’s sky-blue sheets. It was too hot to touch more than that, far less do anything more strenuous. She’s now flipped almost onto her stomach, her face pushed into the pillow, her leg cocked, her knee pressed into my thigh. The light glows on her skin.

  Go to sleep. You need the sleep.

  It doesn’t work. I try to concentrate on the soft whir of Savannah’s breathing, but all I can hear is the fan and the sounds of dripping water outside. It’s lunchtime, Matt Daylight Time. I eventually edge carefully off the bed so I don’t wake Savannah. The tile floor is cool under my feet as I pad to the window.

  We spent twenty hours in transit from LAX to Bangkok, including a short layover in Hong Kong. No matter how nice Cathay Pacific’s business class is, that’s a long damn time to be trapped in an aluminum tube. We crashed (metaphorically) at the Bangkok Airport Novotel, made the hour-plus flight to Chiang Mai just after lunch yesterday, then the three-hour drive from Chiang Mai to Arunothai, bribing half-a-dozen cops at checkpoints along the way. It’s a fifteen-hour time difference between here and home. I think I know what month it is, but that’s as close as I can guess the time.

  “Been awake long?” Savannah’s voice behind me, small and slow.

  “Did I wake you?”

  “Uh-uh. I was faking. Hoped if I act like I’m asleep, I’ll fall asleep. Sometimes it works. What’s out there?”

  “It’s raining. Not very hard, more like a drizzle.”

  “Huh. It’ll be cooler out there.” She sits up, pushing hair off her face.

  “Wanna take a walk?”

  She gives me her sleepy smile, which is both cute and sexy. “Okay.”

  I pull on yesterday’s board shorts and grab a couple Phuket lagers; she ties on a short white-satin robe.

  Our hotel’s a smallish place, with a front office and common room, three bungalows, and two long buildings with multiple rooms. We’re in the long building at the far end. It’s around eighty outside and humid, but the tile walkway in the arcade outside our room is cool and damp. The only lights are little lanterns attached to the outside faces of the posts supporting the arcade’s shed roof. They shimmer in the water beading on our pewter right-hand-drive Toyota Hilux (a.k.a. Tacoma pickup back home) parked outside the room.

  We circle the gravel-and-dirt parking lot until we reach the front office. Off to one side are two benches on a metal platform facing each other across a glass-topped table, covered with a peaked awning. We each claim a bench. Savannah unties her robe and lets it fall open. It’s not a come-on; the breeze feels great.

  She watches me as she nurses her beer. “I’ve wanted to ask you something for… a while. Now’s probably as good a time as any.”

  This wouldn’t sound promising at any time of day. It sounds ominous at two-something in the morning. “What’s that?”

  She takes another mouthful, then sets down her bottle. “Who are you really?”

  I’m dopey from a lack of sleep, so it takes me a moment to process that. “Say what?”

  “I can believe your name is Rick Hoskins. I’m pretty sure you’re not who you say you are, or who you want me to think you are. So that makes me wonder… who are you really?”

  Shit. Suddenly I’m wide awake. “Where did this come from?”

  She lounges against her bench and stretches her arms along the back. It may be coincidental that this opens her robe even more, but I wouldn’t bet on it. “I’ve been thinking about it since you showed me around your house—or, that house. I’m not convinced it’s yours.” Her voice is calm, matter-of-fact. “It just felt… off. There were no pictures, for one thing.”

  “There’s pictures all over the walls.” I know that’s not what she means, but she’s right and I need to push back before she gets any momentum going.

  “Paintings. I mean photos. There’s not a single photo of you or your family. Okay, I get that you don’t like having your picture taken. But your whole family?” She holds up her hand when I start to say something. “Then I thought, well, maybe he doesn’t like his family. It happens. I don’t have a single photo of Mother or Father. But I’ve never met a rich man who didn’t have an I-love-me wall in his office or his home. You know, where he has all those awards and pictures of him with other rich people or famous people. Never… until you.”

  I’d thought of it, but it would’ve taken a lot more time to pull off than we had. Stupid me—I figured she wouldn’t notice. “I’m not a trophy hunter.”

  “But you are.” She points her bottle at me, then takes a pull. “Your paintings are trophies. Now your ceramics are. But that’s not the only thing. The appliances? There weren’t any scratches or dings. They looked brand new.”

  She noticed that too? I totally underestimated her. “I replaced them a few months ago.”

  “All of them? At the same time? Also, the stuff in the drawers. Not the pots and pans; the little stuff, like spatulas and measuring cups and whisks. They were all brand new, too, like you bought them all at the same time.”

  “So that’s what you were looking for.” Blank look. “I saw you going through my cabinets and drawers.” Now confusion. “Cameras.”

  Savannah frowns. “I didn’t see any cameras.”

  “That’s kinda the point to hidden cameras. I’d wondered what you were doing. Why didn’t you ask me about it then?”

  She sets down her bottle, crosses her arms. “I wasn’t absolutely certain what I was seeing. Maybe you were just different. Rich people can be, you know. I wanted to see where things went.” She shrugs. “They went to bed, so I thought, in for a penny, right?”

  “If I remember right, you engineered that.”

  Big smile. “Uh-huh. What better way to find out more about you? Plus, you’re cute, and you’re nice. Usually. And that chicken mole was wonderful. And I thought it’d be fun. And it was. Is.” She scrunches her nose. “This makes me sound all cheap and slutty, doesn’t it?”

  “Yes, but it also makes you sound devious.”

  “Hmm. That’s two of us, then. After we got together, it just got stranger. Your obsession with finding where Nam Ton comes from. You getting those pictures of Jim’s storage locker. You asked questions that no other client ever has before, things that aren’t your business. Then this.” Savannah holds her arms out, taking in the world around us. “You’re too busy to see me for two weeks, then you drop everything to run off to Thailand with me. Not to Phuket or someplace normal, but here.” She folds her arms on the table. “So, who are you really? I like you, but I’d like to know who I’m sleeping with.”

  She’s got me. I’ve been in such a rush, I’ve been sloppy. That’s the problem with rushing. But she said I like you. I’ve gotten to like her. Maybe I can still pull this out.

  Don’t. Admit. Anything. “I could ask you the same question.”

  “This is about you, not me.” That sounds semi-irritated.

  I ignore her. I need to buy a few minutes to figure out how much she knows. I can clam up or go on the attack. Hoskins would charge. “You’re not like any heiress I’ve ever met, and I’ve met a few. The Tonga Room? Food trucks? The Mint? Loteria Grill? You picked those places. Beer from a bottle? Ghirardelli chocolate?”

  “I like Godiva too, if that helps.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind. I’m not complaining—I liked all that, too. But if I picked you up in a bar and we spent the weekend together, I’d never guess you came from money.”

  “Good. That’s the way I like it. I absolutely know what you’re talking about, though.” She smiles absently at what’s become heavy mist. “I had a little black dress when I was eight.”

  Huh? “Did you rock it?”
<
br />   “I owned it. I don’t think you can ‘rock’ anything when you’re eight. Mother and Father would let me wander through their cocktail parties with my little wine glass of milk and listen to the grown-ups talk about politics and business and whatever. I was a great prop for them. They could use me to make people think they were human. A lot of people made that mistake.”

  “How long was it before you were debating with Pete Wilson?” The Republican governor of California in the ‘90s.

  She laughs. “I actually met him when he was still a senator. I wasn’t really supposed to talk to anyone unless they talked to me first. But, you know? Everyone wanted to talk to the little girl with the milk. It turns out that those people didn’t really like my parents very much. They were willing to fake it for the money and the connections. I started noticing things—what people wore, who they talked to, what they said, how much they drank. I was like Harriet the Spy. Of course, Mother would interrogate me at bedtime so she could find out what I’d seen.”

  “You do know how weird that is, right?”

  “Absolutely. I figured that out by the time I was ten or so. But by then I’d started noticing things about Mother and Father, too. Things like how Father touched my nanny or the cook in places I’d only ever seen husbands touch their wives. How Mother drove off every friend I was ever stupid enough to bring home. How each of them told me to lie to the other one. How they’d do really evil things to hurt people who’d made them mad—start rumors, mess with their businesses, that kind of thing.”

  I can’t help feeling sorry for Little Savannah. Nobody should have to live with that crap. “How old were you?”

  “I had a pretty clear picture by junior high.”

  By junior high, I’d figured out my parents had some problems, but no details. I can’t imagine being this aware of their failings that young. “Did you have anybody you could talk to?”

  “Lawan, until Mother threw her away. After that?” She shrugs. “I could trust the other girls at school if our interests aligned, but I didn’t have any friends-forever kind of friends. We were too competitive for that. We all needed to get into Stanford or Harvard.”