We stayed in Marseille just long enough to get the blank phones, kiss Jette and the kids goodbye, and head to the airport. Now that I knew my partner was independently wealthy and not destitute, we were free to spend money instead of living like broke tourists. It turned out she’d been living with me and sharing my hotel rooms not due to the inability or unwillingness to spend cash, but because she was in love with me and wanted to be nearby. I thought it might also have been to keep other women out of my bed, but I kept that theory to myself. Either way, it was Dark who suggested we charter a private plane to the Caribbean while we followed the money trail from the escort ring. I was glad, because with my income shut off, I’d have needed to hire a canoe for the trip.
Some inquires and an exchange of information with Rob Mackleton told me that Rosie had disappeared but not before she’d revealed the escort service had been laundering their money through various business ventures and through accounts in the Cayman Islands.
“Do you reckon the government knows about the offshore accounts?” I asked him.
“They must if they have the client list. Rosie popped her cork to me just because I promised to publish her story once all this blew up. Imagine what the others might tell under pressure of being jailed by you Yanks in Guantanamo or God knows where.”
“We’re closing that, remember?”
He and I both had a good laugh at that one.
“Should you be talking to me on the phone?” he asked. “I mean given everything?”
“It’ll be fine,” I said and disconnected. I’d hung up before I realized I’d forgotten to say goodbye. Dark was definitely rubbing off on me, and not always in the good ways. The truth is I was guessing Samuels’s team had been watching Rob. We factored their eavesdropping into our planning. Instead of a direct cell call, I’d used my old phone to call him via Facebook’s Messenger. That wouldn’t be impossible to trace, but it would slow them down before they headed out to the Caribbean after us. As my daddy used to say, if you want to catch a fish, sometimes you have to smell like bait.
At Marseille airport, Dark was dressed in the biggest, floppiest, black hat I’d ever seen, matched up with her bug-from-space oversized shades. Her barely tanned skin, tight black slacks, and ruby lips perfected the look. She was about as discreet as a supernova. We walked through security with little problem and directly onto the tarmac, heading for the jet that would be our ride to the Caymans. I resisted the urge to look around, focusing my attention on my partner’s little wiggle as she strutted in front of me. We boarded the plane and took our seats. There were only two other passengers, a tall black man and a smaller, dark-haired, European woman around Dark’s size.
Dark peeked out the small porthole-sized window and said, “My spider senses are tingling.”
“Yeah, I feel it too. We’re being tracked by somebody.”
“Good, then let’s give them a show.” She pressed her face as close to the window as she could, beckoned me near, and then kissed the hell out of me. Once I was sufficiently subdued, she slammed the window shades shut. The flight attendant proceeded to close all the other ones.
“Are we ready?” I asked her.
“Whenever you are, sir,” she said.
I looked at Dark. “Let’s do it,” she responded.
We unbuckled, and the flight attendant rushed us into the back where we donned airport ground crew uniforms and gave our former outfits to our doppelgangers. Another crew member nodded, and following Dark, I slipped out of the open door the ground crew had been using to clean and prep the plane.
“Go! Go!” a crewman whispered. He pulled open a flap on one of the mobile luggage transports. Dark and I crawled inside and he pulled the flap closed. Five minutes later, we were back inside the airport, and ten minutes after that we were in a hired car on our way back to the city. Once we were sufficiently positive we’d ditched our trackers, we headed to Jette’s place.
“Are you sure this will work, Foss?” Dark asked.
“I think it will, but it’s a damned expensive way to lose a tail, flying a couple of cell phones and two passengers to the Cayman Islands.”
“Don’t worry, the woman is Claudette, my cousin. We resemble each other enough that she can pass for me at a distance. Besides, she was happy to get a free flight to the Caribbean. Luckily, Marseille is very diverse and Claudette belongs to a gym. Giant chocolate gods are hard to find on short notice.” He didn’t look so godlike to me and I told her so. She ignored me and asked, “Are you sure the U.S. can track us to the Caymans?”
“I’m damned sure. That’s how they’ve known where we were. They’ll probably turn our old phones on as soon as the plane is on the ground.” I felt my jaw tighten. “Wish I could see Hardesty’s face when they realize our phones are following the money to the Caribbean, but we aren’t.”
“Oui, let’s just hope they don’t figure out where we’re going.” On that we were in complete agreement.
As planned, Jette and the kids were gone in case we were followed. Dark slipped off the dark wig she’d been wearing and changed into jeans and a halter top. She passed by a mirror on her way to me and stopped, frowning and rubbing her head as though it were infected with lice.
I said, “Baby, I promise, you look beautiful, just like Jette.”
“Not like my mother, though, right?”
“You don’t look anything like the photos you showed me. Actually, you look like your dad.”
Dark gave me a crooked smile and kissed my cheek. Turning from the mirror, she gave heavy sigh. “I’m still not sure being blond is better than being shot.” I knew better than to laugh, so I gathered our things and headed to the attached garage. Dark came after me, but there was no strut in her step this time. She touched her hip. “Let’s hope this brace Jette designed works. I haven’t walked without a cane for twenty years.”
“You’ll be fine. Just take my hand if you feel weak.”
“I always feel weak when you hold my hand,” she said, batting her eyelashes at me.
“Very funny.” She cackled at me. “Come on, let’s see this famous Renault you keep bragging about.” I pulled the cover off the car and stepped back. It was blue, immaculate, and like Dark promised, sexy. The car was a sleek two-seater with a sloped rear window and recessed panels on the side like the original Corvettes. It reminded me of a Porsche, except it was much more feminine and somehow more refined. I was in love, again. “What is this?” I asked, running my hand along the car’s sexy rear end.
“Her name is Sylvie. She is a 1972 Renault Alpine A110, all original except the engine, brakes, and suspension. Those are better than original.” She tossed me the keys and pointed a sharp finger at me. “Do not scratch her or I will divorce you.”
“You have to marry me before you can divorce me.”
“I will marry you just to divorce you,” she said, aiming that stubborn chin at me.
I climbed in but not before stopping to admire the perfect picture of an ibis in flight that Dark hand painted on the driver’s door. “Don’t worry, me and Sylvie are going to be the best of friends.”
Dark gave me a glowing smile, and we started out.
“How long until London?” she asked, putting her left foot on the dash. I think she was trying to tease me. It was working.
“According to the GPS, twelve hours.”
“Sissy.”
I grinned at her. “I was hoping to do it in nine.”
“Jette and I once did it in eight hours and twenty minutes.” She didn’t look at me, but I could see the traces of a smile breaching the corners of her mouth.
“Eight twenty?” I was impressed. “No wonder you call her Jette. We should call you Rockette.”
“Sissy.”
“If the cops pick us up, that’ll screw up our plans. We’ll be on the grid and our whole cover gets blown.”
Dark lowered her seat back, removed her glasses, and closed her eyes. “In that case, you best not let them catch you. Sylvie doesn’
t like gendarmes.”
I almost broke my smile grinning. “This baby is going to get a lot of attention in England.”
“She better,” Dark said, smiling. “I hate when things don’t go to plan.”
“Eat your heart out, James Bond.” I turned her on and hit the gas. Sylvie purred at me and took off like a blue-toned bat out of hell, heading north. By the time I shifted into fifth gear, I was in heaven. “How fast does this car go?”
Dark peeked at me. “I don’t know. The speedometer stops at 210 KPH.”
My kind of girls, both.
***
We made it into the UK without a hitch, owing to the false papers we picked up in Africa. I was Samuel Uwazie traveling with my wife Michèle. Our passports showed us to be citizens of Saint-Maarten in the Caribbean. I practically held my breath the entire way through customs, afraid that some wily immigration official would realize that Uwazie is a Nigerian surname. Of course I didn’t learn that until we had the passports and were in France. Some information, you just want your partner to keep from you. To our good fortune, as Saint-Maarten was on the list of countries for which visas weren’t required, Customs did little but welcome us to the UK and send us on our way.
We set up shop in a furnished two-bedroom flat in London’s east end, one bedroom for us, and one that we used as an office. Over the course of two weeks, we pretty much spent all of our time with Rob Mackleton, tracing the money from leads and contacts he had, but making little real headway. Without having access to the escort service’s client list, it was fruitless. Samuels had a copy of the client list and Rudenko likely had one on his computer. Unfortunately, breaking into the Institute to gain Samuels’s list may have been within James Bond’s skill set, but Dark and I would have been shot on sight. Rudenko’s computer had been destroyed in the explosion, along with most of the room. Salvaging what was left might have given us leads on account numbers, but there wasn’t time to look before the police had shown up.
“This is pointless,” Rob said. He was pacing—beer in hand—in an unsteady circle and venting at no one in particular. “Unless we can get our hands on some real data, we’re just pissing in the wind.”
“Why is it whenever men get frustrated, they use analogies that center on their penises?” Dark was fully drunk.
I was pretty damned close behind her. “It’s the only weapon we have that the government will let us keep.”
“Not much of a weapon, if you ask me,” she said, and sank into a chair. “Try pushing out a baby with one of those things.” She took another swig of beer.
“If you two are finished,” Rob said, “I’d like to come to some sort of conclusion here.”
I wiped my face, trying to clear enough space for a thought or two to sink in. “We need to talk to the escorts,” I finally said.
“We’ve been through this, Foster. The only good names we had were Pearl, who’s left the country by all accounts, Jeanne’s contact who calls herself José, and the one you interviewed-stroke-assaulted in the alley weeks ago.” He tapped on his laptop’s keyboard. “Jean-Luc Dupuy.”
“Ah, Luc,” Dark said. “How is he? He was pretty cooperative.”
“After you Tasered him, yeah,” I said.
Dark and I looked at each other. On cue, we both shouted, “I shock his balls!” and fell into a fit of drunken laughter.
Rob rolled his eyes. “I bloody hope you two don’t have kids.”
“Hey! That’s not nice!” Dark’s eyes were blazing. I took her cane just in case.
“That’s it, I quit. Even a bloody Press Award isn’t worth this misery, full stop.” He stood up, ready to head to the door. Dark intercepted him.
“You know what your problem is, Rober’?” she asked.
“No, pray tell me.”
“Nothing. That’s your problem. You’re too perfect. You need flaws, Rober’. Flaws build character.” She wrapped an arm around his shoulder and pointed the other beer-clenching hand at me. “Ask Foss. He’s got loads of character.” Her giggles grew louder. I didn’t realize I’d been insulted until I sobered up the next day, so I bowed my thank yous and almost fell over on my face. I decided to sit down.
Rob tried to wiggle out of her grasp, to no avail. Despite his protestations, she poured some of her beer in his mouth. From his reaction, I thought he’d throw up. I staggered out of my chair and interceded. Dark took a swing at me—or at Rob. Her depth perception was off by far enough that it wasn’t certain whom her target was. She plopped onto the small sofa. “So who gets wooed?” she said.
“Who gets what wood?” Rob asked. He was wiping his mouth with his handkerchief.
“No, that’s her ax Frenchent … her French accent. She’s saying wooed.” I knew I dragged the last word out too long, but it felt as though it got caught on my lips.
Dark was lying down now, giggling.
Rob exhaled, looked at me, and then leaned against me. “I’m drunk.”
“So are you,” I said. Dark laughed louder, which confused me. Confusion made me dizzy, so I sat back down. Rob fell over in the process though I wasn’t sure why.
“What are we going to do, Foss? Do you have any ideas?” Rob asked, crawling over to sit opposite me.
I was in the midst of shaking my head when Dark came stumbling over and leaned her torso over my back, digging her bony elbows into my shoulder blades. Her chin ended up on the crown on my head. Rob gave her a dazed looked. “It seems to me if we want to make some progress, we need an insider,” she said.
“We know this,” he said.
“So, either Foss woos Rosie to get her to talk, or I woo José.” She whispered to Rob as though I couldn’t hear her. “She wants me, bad.”
“I vote José, then,” he said, eyeing me.
“It really doesn’t matter,” I said. “We don’t know where José is and Rosie’s disappeared too.”
Dark stood straight, held her head, and sat herself in Rob’s lap. He looked more stunned than I did. “You’re very handsome,” she said, looking up at him. “I should introduce you to my cousin, Marcel.” Before he could respond, she said, “We don’t know where Rosie is, but we know who does.”
“Her mother,” said Rob. “Brilliant. But she won’t talk to the police, so why would she talk to us?”
“Because, she knows we actually want to help her daughter. Besides, Foss has a crush on Rosie.” She looked at me and smiled. “Mums can tell.”
“You should go talk to Mrs. Rao,” I said. “You have a rapport with her.”
Dark gave me an intense stare I’d not seen on her. “Don’t believe the fact I can connect with a subject means I approve of them. I feel their emotions without judging or embracing them. Channeling is my job, Foss.”
“I understand that. I … I just thought you liked her.” I looked to Rob for support. He shrugged, pushed Dark onto the floor, and left to pee. “Good looking out,” I said.
“You are a terrible chair!” Dark shouted after Rob.
***
Despite my objections, the two co-conspirators insisted I call on Mrs. Rao the next day. I ultimately gave in just so Rob would go home and let me sleep. I was hungover in the morning, which turned out to be a good thing, as in my disheveled state, I was able to walk right by the goons watching her flat without their taking notice. They were in plainclothes and would have blended nicely into the scenery, were this New York. Here in London, their hooded t-shirts screamed We’re Americans in a voice I could almost hear in my head.
Thirty minutes after opening her door, Mrs. Rao was showing me Rosie’s baby photos and telling me how distraught she was that her daughter had disappeared. Something about her tone didn’t ring true, as if it were a performance. Maybe I was picking up Dark’s gifts. Whatever the case—intuition, my natural cynicism, or the blaring headache I was nursing—I was in no mood to be nice to this fake, old bitch.
“You know where she is, don’t you?” I asked.
Mrs. Rao was in the middle of some disc
ourse about Rosie’s public school career. I’m sure the look in my eyes and the barely hidden snarl convinced her I meant business. “I-I’m not certain.” She met my eyes. All the sugar and glitter was gone from her voice. “I have an idea where she might have hidden herself.”
“Then I suggest you cut the shit and give me the details so I can try and keep her alive.”
She imitated a goldfish a couple of times, opening and shutting her wordless trap before getting the hell up and scribbling an address on a notepad. I took the paper and got the hell out of there as fast as I could, lest I punch the wrinkled bag of skin in the mouth. It turned out Rosie hadn’t left the UK at all, but had holed up in a third floor walkup that her late stepfather kept as a place in which to hold their rendezvous. I’d left the Rao flat one-third thrilled that we were finally making progress and two-thirds sickened by the knowledge that Rosie’s mom knew about their assignations, and by implication, the fact that her husband was having sex with her daughter since she was a kid. The whole case was making me feel dirty. It was the first time I’d ever liked the criminals more than the victims.
***
Rosie answered the door on the first knock and then pulled me inside as if the outside air were toxic. She didn’t speak but paced about like a caged cat. I sat cross-legged watching her burn off steam. Finally, ten minutes into our pantomime, she said, “I was trying to protect you.”
“I know.”
“So, don’t expect me to apologize.”
“I’m pretty sure you just did.”
She opened and shut her mouth. I’d taken all the wind from her sails. I needed her not to fight me, but it was a delicate balance as a defeated Rosie would be of no use to us. I should have known better than to worry. The girl was born with fight.
“Why the fuck are you here, Foster? You have that woman’s scent all over you, so it sure as hell ain’t to have it off.”
“I might have done, but I sort of fell in love.” Both parts of that sentence embarrassed me, though I wasn’t sure why. I had the oddest feeling, as though I’d dumped Rosie for Dark.
The Little Burgundy: A Jeanne Dark Adventure Page 28
