Betrayal dh-12

by John Lescroart

  "Whatever you can tell me."

  "Well, he liked it, it paid very well, he was gone a lot."

  "Back and forth to Iraq?"

  "Sometimes."

  "Even though he was under suspicion for causing the blow-up at Masbah?"

  "I never knew about that until Evan told me just before Ron and I broke up. But that really didn't worry Ron. Nothing worried Ron. I'm pretty sure he went over to Iraq at least three, maybe four times. To get paid in cash if nothing else."

  "In cash?"

  "Yes." She adjusted herself in the seat. "He showed me a wrapped-up brick of something like fifty thousand dollars in cash after one of his trips."

  "What did he get that for?"

  "I think it was just how he got his regular pay sometimes. That's what he told me."

  "How did he get that back into the country?"

  "What do you mean?"

  "I mean, you can't enter the country with that kind of money in cash. You've got to claim it at customs."

  She shook her head. "No. Ron didn't have any problem with that. He always flew by military transport out of Travis. He knew all the pilots and the commanders and everything. It was just part of how Allstrong did business."

  "Tara," Hardy asked, "didn't it ever occur to you that Ron brought those frag grenades over from Iraq the same way, and that he'd killed the Khalils with them?"

  "Of course. I knew Evan hadn't done that anyway. But there wasn't really any proof that Ron had either. But then, he was such a liar. He lied about everything to me. And to Evan."

  "Did you ever hear him mention anything about the Khalils?"

  "No. Not really. Not until they were dead, anyway." She looked at Hardy in a pout of frustration. "I wish I knew what you were trying to get me to say. If it would help Evan, I'd say it. But I didn't know much about Ron's work at all."

  "I'm not trying to get you to say anything, Tara. I'm trying to get a handle on Ron Nolan, on what was going on around him. See if that leads me anywhere on this appeal."

  "Well, for a handle, I can help you there. He said he was a warrior."

  "A warrior. What did he mean by that?"

  "Oh, we talked about that a lot. I really didn't like it, or agree with him, but when he talked he could make it sound like it made perfect sense."

  "What did, exactly?"

  "That the world needed warriors, and the job of the warrior was to kill. And that's who he was, how he defined himself."

  "As a killer?"

  "A killer." She nodded. "And I'm sure he was. One time…well, no, never mind."

  "What?"

  She paused, then shrugged. "Well, it was one of our first dates…"

  35

  Glitsky was on the phone at his desk, talking to his closest connection in the FBI, Bureau Chief Bill Schuyler, with whom he'd had many previous, nearly amicable dealings. Now the tone didn't ring with cooperation and friendship.

  "Bill," Glitsky said, "you're telling me both agents quit?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "At the same time?"

  "I'm not at liberty to disclose that, Abe. They're no longer with the Bureau. That's all I know."

  "Could I talk to their superior?"

  "I am their superior, Abe. What else do you want to know?"

  "I want to know where they are."

  "I just told you. They quit."

  "You just also told me that you were their superior. And two hours ago when we last talked, you didn't know they'd left the Bureau."

  "I hadn't worked with them personally in a while, Abe. I guess they got away from me."

  After a small pause, Glitsky tried again. "This is a murder case, Bill. Freed and Riggio testified a couple of years ago down in Redwood City and it would be helpful to know who they talked to."

  "Wouldn't that all be in the record?"

  "We were wondering if any of their reports dealing with that case happened not to get turned over to the DA."

  "I'm sure they turned over everything they were supposed to. And you're investigating a homicide in Redwood City? Isn't that outside of your jurisdiction? And who is we?"

  "The Redwood City case might be connected to a couple of San Francisco homicides, Bill. And we is me and the lawyer I've been working with on this stuff."

  "Well, whoever it is, Freed and Riggio aren't going to be available."

  "Because they've left the Bureau?"

  "That's correct, Abe. Anything else?"

  "When you say they left the Bureau, Bill, do you mean they joined another federal agency? Or are you telling me a couple of thirty-something FBI agents opened a Dairy Queen in Texas and didn't tell you where?"

  "Always a pleasure to talk to you, Abe. Have a nice day."

  In spite of Schuyler's best wishes, Glitsky wasn't, in fact, having a nice day. He sat at his desk in the early afternoon. He had gotten up five minutes earlier and turned off his overhead lights, closing and locking the door behind him. Both of his hands were cupped on the blotter in front of him and from time to time, irregularly, he would drum the fingers of those hands. His mouth was tight and a muscle in his jaw worked at the side of his cheek.

  He hadn't been kidding when he'd told Hardy that one didn't really have bosom buddies among the agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. But Hardy's request, to put the word out to Agents Jacob Freed and Marcia Riggio to talk to him if he called, had been so benign that Glitsky never expected any sort of bureaucratic runaround. He and Schuyler had worked portions of several cases together and, jurisdictional squabbles apart, had always before gotten along reasonably well as human beings.

  When Hardy had told him on Friday night that the number of questions surrounding the Bowens, which might or might not be connected with the Scholler case, was sufficient to get his attention, Glitsky still had had no problem reserving his judgment. Questions came with the territory. They were what investigations were all about. Few people had the good taste to disappear or die in such a way as to leave all questionable issues in their lives resolved.

  But now this unexplained and almost certainly spurious disappearance of the two FBI agents who'd been instrumental in the Scholler case forced Glitsky up against one of the other cardinal rules of investigation: There is no such thing as a coincidence.

  It wasn't a coincidence that Ron Nolan worked for Allstrong, and so had Arnold Zwick.

  Three broken necks in one weekend wasn't a coincidence.

  Beyond those new and disturbing items, it was one thing to have Charlie Bowen, who was working on the appeal in the Scholler case, vanish without a trace. There was a reasonable and plausible explanation for the suicide of his wife six months later.

  And certainly FBI agents had been known to leave their jobs.

  But for all of these things to come together in an apparently random set of coincidences stretched Glitsky's credulity far beyond its normal capacity for elasticity.

  A relationship existed here among these parts. He just didn't know what it was. But he was starting to get a good idea that it probably involved at least one homicide in his jurisdiction, possibly two. And maybe more. This made it his business.

  But more than that, the FBI and Allstrong connections significantly enlarged the playing field. Whatever had originally happened in the Scholler case, and Glitsky was woefully ignorant of all but the most general of those details, it had appeared more or less parochial-essentially two guys duking it out over a woman. Now, suddenly, Hardy's theories involving the Khalils, and whatever business they were doing in Iraq, and perhaps even some kind of U.S. government involvement, did not seem so incredibly far-fetched. And though Abe's opinion of the FBI's methods included his belief that it would ignore the taking of a life by a snitch or a prospective witness if it suited its agenda, it it did not extend to the possibility that its agents would actually sanction or commit murder.

  So-the only conclusion he could draw-the FBI knew more about this case than they were willing to divulge. They possibly knew who had killed the Khal
ils. And who had killed Ron Nolan. And if it wasn't Evan Scholler, this meant that the FBI had let the wrong man be sent to prison for life.

  If one of the Khalils instead had killed Nolan in retaliation, and then either or both of the Bowens because they'd picked up that trail, and the FBI knew about it…

  He pulled over the phone on this desk, lifted the receiver, and punched in a number he knew by heart. "Hello, Phyllis," he said, "it's Abe Glitsky. I need to talk to Diz, please."

  Hardy's private investigator, Wyatt Hunt, did his research primarily on his computer in the large converted warehouse by the Hall of Justice that he called home. He had no trouble finding the details of the Khalil murders on the net. Over the weekend, he also spoke to Hardy to clarify exactly what his assignment was. It had evolved somewhat from Friday's first phone call, when Hardy merely wanted to know who, if anyone, among the Khalil family had had an interview with FBI special agents in regard to the Scholler case. Now, Hunt's personal priority had shifted to finding out, without putting himself in danger, what those interviews had been about.

  By now, on Monday afternoon, he knew that the extended Khalil clan consisted of twenty-three separate families strung out between South San Francisco and San Jose, and then across the Bay over to Hayward and Fremont. The typical arrangement was that each family owned its own franchise of the 7-Eleven chain, although four of them owned more than one store. The family had been in the country since Ibrahim and Shatha had emigrated with their four children in 1989, before the first Gulf War.

  The eldest surviving brother, Abdel Khalil, had been the spokesman for the family in the aftermath of the murders of his parents and seemed the likeliest source of information. Abdel owned three stores along the El Camino Real between the two northern Peninsula towns of Millbrae and San Bruno, but conducted his corporate business out of a low-slung stucco-and-glass building set down in a former landfill by San Francisco Airport.

  Hunt got out of his Mini Cooper and walked in the flat glaring sunshine across a treeless parking lot and into the nondescript reception area of AMK, Inc. A swarthy, somewhat disheveled young man in shirtsleeves sat at the only substantial piece of furniture, a cluttered desk in the middle of the room. He was sorting some kind of paperwork. A cup of tea steamed at the side of his desk. The screen saver on his computer showed an artist's rendering of a 7-Eleven store in a typical urban strip mall. A radio, turned low, played what Hunt would have called Middle Eastern, perhaps Iraqi, music.

  Hunt had made the appointment this morning, probably with this same young man, under slightly bogus conditions, saying that he was a writer who was doing an article on successful immigration stories. Now, after he introduced himself, the boy gave him a nervous smile and disappeared through a door behind him, leaving Hunt standing alone in front of the desk.

  A minute later, Hunt was shaking hands with a good-looking man in his mid-thirties. With his mustache he bore a slight resemblance to Saddam Hussein, although he was dressed in American clothes-black slacks that looked to be the bottom portion of a man's suit and a light blue dress shirt with an open neck. "Mr. Hunt, I'm Abdel Khalil. Would you like something to drink? A cup of tea, perhaps, coffee, Coke."

  "Coffee would be nice. Black, please."

  "Fine. We can take it in my office." Khalil snapped his fingers twice quickly and the boy jumped, bowed, and disappeared.

  Hunt followed Khalil to a more spacious room in the back corner of the building. From the chair he was directed to in front of the standard wooden desk, he had an unimpeded view of the Bay and of planes landing at the airport.

  The room itself, like its counterpart outside, was functional in the extreme. An oversized map of the Bay Area was pinned to one of the walls above a low credenza. A computer had its own small table at a right angle to the desk, which Khalil went around and sat behind. He'd barely gotten settled when the receptionist knocked and entered with a cup of coffee and handed it to Hunt, then closed the door behind him on the way out.

  "Now." Khalil clasped his hands on the desk. He spoke educated and uninflected English. "Mr. Hunt. How's the coffee? Good. Now, how can I help you? I understand you're writing an article of some kind?"

  This was always the tough part. Hunt placed his saucer on the tiny table next to him. "Actually, sir, that's not the case, and I apologize. I'm a private investigator working with a lawyer who's doing the appeal on the Evan Scholler case and if you'd like to kick me out of here, I'd understand."

  Surprised, but not completely unamused, Khalil waved that off. "You've barely gotten settled. Why would you think I wouldn't talk to you about Evan Scholler?"

  "It could be a touchy subject."

  "And why would that be?"

  "I think the assumption was that he killed your parents."

  "Yes." Khalil's face darkened. "That was a difficult time. But I hope we've put that behind us. Did you say Scholler was appealing his conviction?"

  Hunt nodded.

  "Well, I wish him luck."

  "You do? That's a bit of a surprise."

  "Why is that?"

  "If he killed your parents."

  "But he was never charged with killing my parents. And frankly, it didn't seem to make much sense at the time, unless you bought the idea that after what happened to him over there, he hated all Iraqis and just picked them as a random couple to sacrifice." Khalil shook his head. "I never really saw that."

  "So who do you think killed them?"

  "I think it must have been Ron Nolan."

  "Why do you say that?"

  "Well, the fragmentation grenades, for example. His work, I understand, brought him to and from Iraq frequently, where he would have access to that stuff and would have been able to bring it back here by military transport without having to bother with customs."

  "But why?"

  "Why what?"

  "Why your parents? What was Nolan's motive?"

  Khalil grimaced, the memory of it all beginning to play back. "I believe he picked up a contract to assassinate them in Iraq. Our family has business interests over there and I think-well, I had heard this, and when I told the FBI-"

  "Wait a minute, please! Excuse me. You're saying you talked to the FBI, then?"

  "Of course."

  "And you told them that you believed Ron Nolan had killed your parents because of information that you got from Iraq?"

  "Well, yes."

  "And what did the FBI say?"

  "They seemed to already know, and didn't disagree that that was probably what happened. They assured us they would look into it. But then, of course, after what happened to Mr. Nolan…"

  "So they talked to you about the Scholler trial?"

  This seemed to stump him for a minute. He half turned and looked out his window, his brow furrowed, then came back to Hunt. "I don't really recall that."

  "So what did they talk to you about?" Hunt sat back, lost for a beat in his own perplexity. "But I'm sorry, I interrupted you. So you're saying the FBI didn't think Scholler killed your parents?"

  "Right. That's probably a large part of the reason he never got charged with that. Everyone I've talked to in the FBI agreed that it was Nolan."

  "But Nolan was never-"

  "Nolan was dead, Mr. Hunt. What was anybody going to do about that? It was over, a done deal. Even if some of my brothers and cousins wanted to kill him, he was already dead."

  "So you're saying Scholler did kill Nolan?"

  Now Khalil showed genuine surprise. "Well, yes, of course. I don't believe anyone has any doubts about that. Do they?"

  Well, as a matter of fact, yes, Hunt was going to say, my boss does. Which would have led to Khalil's next question, Then who did kill Nolan? And Hunt's answer-Hardy's answer-would have been: Uh, you guys. The Khalils. But suddenly, that was not how this was going.

  Instead, Hunt scrambled. "Okay. Nobody doubts Scholler killed Nolan. And the FBI told you that Nolan probably killed your parents. Did they know why? Or who put this contract out?"


  "The short answer is not at first, they couldn't find anything, although I heard from relatives that they interrogated a lot of people over there."

  It was all Hunt could do to keep his mouth from dropping open in amazement. "In Iraq? The FBI interrogated people about your parents' death all the way over in Iraq?"

  "Of course. That's where the trail led."

  "But they didn't find out who did it?"

  "Eventually, they believed they did, yes." Now Khalil allowed a small smile. "And we-my family-verified that they were right. Your FBI, they know what they are doing, you know. They're extremely competent and efficient."

  Hunt sat back. "What did they find out?"

  "Well, as I say, eventually it became more or less obvious. But first you have to know that my father, Ibrahim, was a brilliant businessman. He directed his youngest brother, Mahmoud, in some of his widespread business dealings in Iraq. Mahmoud was trying to supply contract workers on a reconstruction job over there, a very lucrative one, but the main supplier-Mahmoud's chief competitor, in fact-was a Kurd named Kuvan Krekar. The FBI became satisfied that Mr. Krekar took out the contract on my mother and father to disrupt our business over there, and to a large extent he was successful. In the short term." When Khalil's small smile returned, it had a chilling aspect. "I received word about two years ago that Mr. Krekar had died from an improvised explosive device. My country, as you know, is going through some very violent times. But the good news is that Mahmoud and his business have been thriving lately, and we believe we have turned the corner over there."

  36

  At five-thirty, Hardy and Hunt were sharing one of the window booths at Lou the Greek's, a bar and, in some people's opinion, restaurant located just across the street from the Hall of Justice. The squabble over whether it was in fact a true restaurant worthy of the name derived from the uneven quality of the food they served at the place. Many of the regular patrons came in only to drink at the tiny bar in the front, and didn't ever try to eat the constantly changing Special that Lou's wife, Chui, created every single day.