The Death in the Willows

by Forrest, Richard;

  “Last I heard, it was the United States House of Representatives.”

  “Oh, that campaign. The one where ten days before the primary my campaign manager is taking a slow motor trip to Florida with her boyfriend while the candidate flies to Miami with her husband to bask in the sun. Why am I here, Wentworth? Tell me that.”

  “I can’t tell you how sorry I am about the time we’re taking, but I have a strong feeling that before this is over I am going to need your help.”

  “Doing what?”

  “Locating the spools.”

  “With the killer right behind us?”

  “Probably.”

  “Which is why he’s stopped trying to kill you. So you can lead him to the spools.”

  “As long as he doesn’t have them, we’re safe.”

  “If he’s found them, he’ll want you dead.”

  “Maybe.”

  “In which case, blowing up an airplane in flight would be an excellent method.”

  “It probably would,” he replied offhandedly and immediately realized he’d said the wrong thing.

  “Oh, my God!” Bea blanched and fumbled in the rack for the small paper bag.

  The Hungerford Corporation was in a modernistic building located in downtown Miami. A gleaming white structure, with windows glazed as protection from the sun, it reeked of plasticity.

  The young woman behind the reception desk seemed carved from the same material as the building’s edifice. She smiled without feeling, looked coy without animation, and reminded Lyon of dancers he’d sometimes observed at the end of their routine when sheer will retained their smiles.

  “Mr. Sergei Norkov, please.”

  She looked puzzled and then flipped through a wheel index. “Is he a new employee?”

  “No, I would think he’s been here for quite some time.”

  “Mortgages, leasing, or equity financing?”

  “Perhaps all three.”

  “I’m sorry, sir. We have no one at Hungerford by that name. Perhaps you’d like to see one of our account executives?”

  “Thank you.”

  She pressed a small button on the desk and a low chime sounded in some distant room. Almost immediately a replica of the receptionist appeared and walked briskly to the side of the desk.

  “Would you take this gentleman to Mr. Attkins, please?”

  The replica smiled a duplicate smile at Lyon. “This way, please.”

  The door from the reception area, activated by an electric eye, opened before them, and they entered a long hall lit by recessed spots built into the ceiling. Modern art of a subdued nature lined the hallway. With swishing skirt over cheerleader bottom and legs, she led the way past doors marked with such headings as Closing Room III. Around a corner the right wall turned to plate glass.

  Lyon stopped before the long glass window to look into a computer room. Whirling disks on the machines seemed to turn at varying degrees of speed, and some reversed themselves to go first one way, then another. A printout spilled from another machine in long rolls of perforated lists. Two men in white lab coats moved silently around the cool, dehumidified room.

  “This way, sir,” the voice said nearly in his ear.

  The small plaque on the large desk stated that its occupant was John Attkins, senior vice-president. Attkins wore a beige, well-tailored three-piece suit and had manicured hands with a Harvard class ring. He shook hands, smiled a plastic smile, and motioned Lyon to a chair.

  “If you’ll state your problem briefly, Mr. Wentworth, I’ll try and see how Hungerford can fit into your financial picture.”

  “I have a small company in Connecticut. Perhaps you’ve heard of it, Lunch Breaks Unlimited?”

  “No, I don’t believe so. Is it listed?”

  “I own one hundred percent of the stock. It’s a food-vending service. We prepare sandwiches and meals that can be sold in a vending machine and heated in microwave ovens. Our clients are factories, schools, and office buildings.”

  “Yes, I’m aware of that type of operation. What is your need?”

  “I’ve landed a contract with a very large industrial account that will require expansion of my warehouse, food service, and delivery staff.”

  “You have your own money-counting operation?”

  “Yes. I have six Brandt coin-counting machines. We have daily armored car pickups. We’re very careful.”

  “How much money do you need for expansion?”

  “A quarter of a million.”

  “That could be arranged, under the right circumstances. You have certified financial statements and copies of your industrial contracts with you?”

  “Yes, at the hotel. I didn’t want to bring them unless you expressed an interest.”

  “I think possibly our equity operation might be interested. What happens, Mr. Wentworth, is that, simply stated, we take an ownership position in a company.”

  “I’m used to running my own shop.”

  “We wouldn’t have it otherwise. You’ve undoubtedly built a successful operation and will continue to do so. We’d take a stock participation at a good price. The only foot we’d have in your door would be a few accounting people on your staff, and of course control of the money-counting operation. You can understand the reasons for that. There’s always the potential for slippage when you deal with uncounted loose coins and bills.”

  “That’s understandable. What’s the next step?”

  “If you’ll bring your statements and contracts by here tomorrow at ten?”

  “That would be fine. I assume that’s when I can deal personally with Mr. Norkov?”

  “Who?”

  “Sergei Norkov. His name was suggested to me in Connecticut.”

  “You must be mistaken. We have no one here by that name.”

  “Pity. I had some information for him.”

  “Mr. Wentworth, do you want to meet further or not?”

  “Of course.”

  Croft MacKenzie threw back his head with rolls of rocking laughter. “I love it!” he roared. “I just love it!”

  “Do you think they’ll be interested?”

  “In the spools or your company? The answer to both is yes. Do you have financial statements to show them?”

  “I borrowed them from a friend of mine who really does own the company.”

  The office of the Florida Anti-Organized Crime Force was only eight blocks from the Hungerford Company, but it could have been on the other side of the world. Where thick carpeting covered Hungerford’s floors, dirty marble led to small office cubicles in an old post office building. Directions were not provided by pert ex-swimmers from Coral Gables, but from a sour-smelling old man leaning on a mop near a bucket of dirty water.

  Pat’s letter of introduction was addressed to Croft MacKenzie, a bulky man one pound this side of obesity with a massive head covered in white hair and a roar and manner that Lyon knew were the veneer of the professional country boy, but that he would never take as a sign of naiveté.

  “Why their interest in a vending company? I only picked it because I had access to financial data.”

  “A cash flow without receipts. The clink of happiness to those jokers.”

  “The Vegas skim. Take in x dollars and report x minus y to Uncle Sam?”

  “Nope. The beauty of this operation is that it’s the reverse of the skim. They put money into business.”

  “And report and pay taxes on it?”

  “It’s a laundering operation. One of the biggest problems facing all the families right now is getting their money to work for them in a manner that they can legitimately use. They have millions in cash flow from drugs, loan sharking, and prostitution. With the dollar unstable in Europe, and the difficulty in getting the money back, cash export is not feasible. They have to clean the money so they can use it.”

  “A vending company handles nickles, dimes, and quarters in bulk. They can feed money into the company as cash receipts, and there’s no way to tell where it came f
rom.”

  “Presto and it’s laundered. Of course, once they take an equity position in a company, it’s not long until they control it.”

  “And Sergei Norkov is behind it all?”

  “He put it together and makes all the major decisions, and there’s not a damn thing we can do about it. The problem is, they appear lily white, always pay their taxes, never any visible strong arm stuff, and they’re flanked with a staff of legitimate executives.”

  “And well run?”

  “A model of corporate efficiency. We’ve penetrated as high as middle management, but still can’t hang anything on them.”

  “The money they feed in has to come from several sources.”

  “From the major families throughout the country.”

  “Somewhere along the line there has to be a true accounting in order to divide the legitimate profits.”

  “We’ve never been able to penetrate that far.”

  “As they feed cash in, they’d eventually have to know where it came from and in what amounts in order to make a distribution of profits at some later time.”

  “For all we know, Sergei keeps that in his head.”

  “Maybe in the beginning, but it’s gone on too long and is too large. It has to be recorded somewhere. Did Sergeant Pasquale tell you we’re looking for something called the spools?”

  “They could be anything.”

  “No, I don’t think so. I know exactly what they are.”

  “Do you intend to tell the state of Florida, or am I supposed to ask if they’re bigger than a bread box?”

  “Reels of magnetic computer tape.”

  “Smoldering Jesus! Of course. The Hungerford Corporation has some of the finest computer hardware in town. With their present size the information would have to be recorded on magnetic tape.”

  “Known to only a few people. Nick Pasic, one of their oldest employees, would know where the reels were and what they contained.”

  “Christ! With that information, if we had those reels, we could blow their whole damn operation sky-high.”

  “Exactly. All we have to do is find where on the eastern seaboard Nick Pasic hid them.”

  “You won’t find anything here,” Croft said as he parked the car in the Pasic driveway. “We went over it with the proverbial fine toothed and someone else had been here before us.”

  Lyon and Bea stepped from the car into the bright Florida sunlight. The house was similar to others on the street: slab base with cement block construction covered with stucco. There were jalousies and two orange trees in the front yard. A year-old Pontiac was parked under the carport, and in the backyard was a small camper.

  “We did everything but use hammers on the concrete,” Croft said. “There are no computer reels here.”

  “I wouldn’t think there would be, but we may learn something.” He took Bea’s hand and walked around the rear of the house. She stopped at a garden that ran along the rear wall near the patio and stooped next to the flowers. “They’re beautiful.”

  “Yes.” Lyon looked over the small backyard and noted that the grass needed cutting. He turned to Croft. “Buried?”

  “We ran over every square inch of yard with metal detectors. Net take: one dog chain, some coins, and a rusty penknife.”

  The interior of the house had been torn apart. Seat cushions and mattresses had been slit and ripped open, furniture was overturned, drawers pulled out, and fire hooks had been used to pull large hunks of plaster from the ceiling and walls.

  Bea instinctively put her hand to her mouth as Lyon shook his head. “I gather neatness doesn’t count.”

  “It’s hard to search for something when you don’t know what it is.”

  “What seems to be missing?”

  “We have no way of knowing if there was any cash, jewelry, or other valuables here, but outside of that, we think some men’s clothing is gone.”

  “What he took with him?”

  “Probably.”

  Later, as Croft relocked the house, Bea entered the camper sweltering under the high sun. It too had been searched thoroughly and left in the same condition as the house. She stooped before an open drawer at the far end of the camper underneath the bunk. She called to Lyon. “What are these?”

  Lyon entered the camper and knelt by her side. Before him, in jumbled heaps inside the drawer, were odd-shaped pieces of metal of various sizes. At the rear of the drawer were neatly bound lengths of nylon rope. He examined the pieces closely. “Do you see any pulleys?”

  She rummaged through the stack of metal before holding up two pulleys. “Too small for clothesline.”

  “Not for nylon rope.” He picked up a few of the pieces. “These are jam nuts; the pointed ones are pitons. This is a braking bar.”

  “GREAT, WENTWORTH. Next time I want a jam nut or piton, I’ll know where to come. What are they?”

  He held up a ring piton and ran an end of nylon rope through the ring. “The piton is driven into a rock crevice, the line goes through the ring, then you can use it to rappel, as a safety line, what have you.”

  “Rock climbing?”

  “Yes. Good equipment and well maintained. Mr. Pasic was evidently an avid rock climber. Interesting.”

  They inspected the outside of the camper more closely. The rear windows and bumper were covered with stickers such as: I CLIMBED STONE MOUNTAIN, KENTUCKY—LAND OF THE BLUE GRASS, GREAT SMOKY MOUNTAINS NATIONAL PARK.

  “It looks like he might have climbed every mountain in the Appalachian chain.”

  “Maybe,” Lyon said.

  They sat in the coolness of the smaller bar at their hotel. Croft had an ice-glazed glass of beer in front of him, Lyon his sherry, and Bea drank a tall frothy mixture of unknown ingredients. Croft took a long swig of beer and wiped foam from his mouth with the back of his hand.

  “Okay, the spools are computer tapes and Pasic was a mountain climber.”

  “Rock climber. There’s a little difference.”

  “And the killer wants you to find the spools so he can take them?”

  “And sell them back to Hungerford.”

  “They aren’t here, they aren’t in Hartford, where are they?”

  “Somewhere in between.”

  “Outside of climbing every rock for fifteen hundred miles, what now?”

  “Pasic took a gamble, and he was certainly aware of the odds that he might be caught. He was evidently strong enough not to talk under physical torture, but was too careful a man not to have left a clue, a hint of where those reels are.”

  Bea took a sip of her drink. “Why did he do it in the first place? Why take the reels after nineteen years of service?”

  “I don’t think we’ll ever know the full reason, but I don’t think it was for money. I believe he intended to get back to his homeland where he felt he could hide, write a letter to either the FBI or Croft telling where the reels were hidden, and then disappear forever. He had enough money for his wants, had taken care of his daughter, and his wife was dead. His reasons probably had to do with what transpired between him and his wife as she died. It transformed him in some manner, changed his values.”

  From where Lyon sat in the cocktail lounge, he could see through the open door into the lobby and the reservation desk in the far corner. A man in a brightly flowered sports shirt and plaid slacks was bent over the counter filling out a registration form. There was something about the build and the back of his head … Lyon walked briskly into the lobby toward the desk.

  “On vacation, Mr. Hilly?”

  Hilly turned and stared at him. He took a step backward with his hands held protectively in front of him.

  “Hey, no hard feelings, huh, Wentworth? I was in a jam and had to point that gun at you.”

  “I thought you were on bail.”

  “Hearing’s three weeks from yesterday. A guy needs a vacation, right?”

  13

  They stood in Hilly’s hotel room in an awkward circle as the bellboy deposited a suit
case on the luggage rack and bustled around the room switching on air conditioning and lights. Hilly fumbled for a bill and tipped the bellboy.

  “I don’t remember calling this meeting,” he said as the bellboy left.

  “Call it an extemporaneous gathering,” Croft said and jabbed a finger in Hilly’s chest. The other man sat heavily down in a chair by the window. Lyon and Bea sat together on a far bed as Croft stood over Hilly. “The long arm of coincidence we don’t buy.”

  “It’s a big hotel, one of the best on the beach. Why can’t I be here?”

  “Are you clean?”

  “They yanked my license and gun.”

  “If you’re on bail, what are you doing down here?”

  “My lawyer checked it out. As long as I’m back for the hearing, I’m all right.”

  “Where’s your wife?” Bea asked softly.

  “Home where she should be,” was the snapped reply.

  “You expect us to believe you’re on vacation, and just happened to pick the same hotel where we are staying?”

  “Believe what you want. Now, beat it! I want to take a shower.” He started across the room until Croft intercepted him and pushed him back in the chair. “Hey!”

  “Shut up! Any more lack of cooperation from you and I’ll see that you’re booked.”

  “On what charge?”

  “I can probably think of half a dozen to keep you occupied.”

  “I haven’t done anything.”

  “You’re here.”

  “I was told to be. I’m on a job.”

  “With a suspended license?”

  Hilly shrugged. “A guy’s got to make a living. I got a family to support.”

  “Who’s your client this time?”

  “An outfit called the Hungerford Corporation. A man named Attkins called me and said they had a security problem. They wired me a retainer and made my reservations here. Hell, I didn’t know the Wentworths were going to be in Florida.”

  “A coincidence,” Lyon said. “Like you just happened to be on your way to Connecticut when the bus was destroyed, and just happened to be watching me for some unknown client.”

  “I think I was suckered.”

  “What sort of security problem does Hungerford have?”

  “I don’t know. They said they’d explain when I got here.”