“Moooooovvviiiiing on to nuuuuuuuhmber foooooouuuuuur,” Geo drawled as slowly as he possibly could to antagonize me, then picked up the pace because even he couldn’t stand to go that slow. “Speaking of unclean or dirty pasts, although currently squeaky clean, Tomas’s history in Puerto Rico, prior to coming to the mainland, is murky, and I’m still working on that. Both Mai and Sylvester appear to have mentored and looked out for him.”
“Tomas does seem to carry a torch for those two. Now we know why.”
“Moooooovvviiiiing onto nuuuuuuuhmber threeeeeeeeeeee,” Geo pretended he didn’t notice that I was brimming with impatience, “gained through extensive criminal and legal history background checks, followed by internet searches on the plaintiffs and defendants’ histories and then following through on news-related items, but I won’t mention any of that so as not to bore you. Karl Zaiid, Michael Oversong, Liang Chen and Sylvester Swane all have had numerous run-ins with the legal system in one form or another. And I don’t mean parking tickets.”
“Ah, the unclean and dirty. All crowded around the top. So give me a quick sketch.”
“The least transgressor, at this stage of the game anyway, appears to be Karl Zaiid. He’s had two run-ins with the law and walked away from both. Ten years ago, in Belgium, he was charged with fraud and money laundering and acquitted on both charges. Then five years ago he was charged with assault and battery of his ex-wife, also in Belgium. All those charges were dropped. Currently, he’s a dual-nationalist, for both Belgium and the U.S.”
I mused, “His style is the most intimidating of all of them, but maybe he’s all talk and no show. If you meet him, you’ll understand how easy it is to imagine him beating up an ex. It might be interesting to speak to the ex-wife if we can track down her whereabouts. So who’s next?”
By this time, we’d parked the Camry in the Biltmore office parking lot with Geo’s meager air conditioning and Snoops both running at the same time. Liang appeared to be driving along and still listening to his favorite brand of music.
“Michael,” Geo continued, “appears to have been in the diamond business in some facet…” Geo slid his eyes toward me to see if I’d caught his pun, “for most of his career.”
“Ha, ha, ha. Go ahead, make my day with your corny little pun.” We both smiled. “Continue.”
“During his long career, he’s been sued twice for misrepresentation of goods, namely diamonds. Both charges followed in quick succession approximately eight years ago when he was in direct-to-the-consumer sales and diamond appraisals. He was charged with substituting diamonds of lesser value into jewelry in his care for appraisals. He, of course, maintained his innocence throughout and fired an employee as a direct result of the investigations. He settled out of court for large sums, exceeding the value of the substituted gems, but in the consumer diamond business, word can get around and such notoriety is a business killer. Shortly after, Michael switched to more of a clearinghouse, middleman focus for the business with no direct consumer contact. At this point in time, he also met Mai Chen, now Mai Oversong. They’ve been married for seven years.”
“Maybe Mai’s gettin’ the seven year itch, as they say, and starting to look around for someone to scratch it. From what I saw between her and Zaiid, though, my guess is that’s not where Michael’s competition lies, if anywhere. Of course, you never know. Some people’ll toss out a perfectly functional marriage for a completely dysfunctional affair. Mai doesn’t strike me as the stupid type, though. Except, maybe where her little brother is concerned.”
“Just a side note, the Swann Company is really small potatoes, even though they rake in numerous millions in net profit yearly and rising, but the DeBeers family has owned, operated, and self-regulated the diamond industry nearly since its inception. They swing around in the upper stratosphere, raking in billions yearly, and they mean to keep it that way. However, there’s still latitude for a company like Swann to carve out its own little niche in the industry, or niches, with their new industrial diamond line of business.”
“You’ve drawn out nuuuuuuuhmber threeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee for a really long time, Geo.”
“Aye, aye, Captain Dick, I just thought that you might like to get educated about the history of the business we are investigating, but I see that kind of in-depth background information is boring for you, so I shall continue. Mooooooving right along to the lovely, I know because I Googled him, Liang Chen, who looks like an androgynous supermodel. Mr. Android has been charged with drug possession. Not once, not twice, but three times. And all three times, it appears that sister Mai has paid through the teeth for the finest lawyers in the land, and Liang’s gotten off scot-free.”
“Same kind of drug each time?”
“Yep, looks like Liang’s got a strong yen for cocaine, also no pun intended on the yen,” Geo smiled sideways at me, “but maybe now he’s cleaned up long enough to switch his addiction to gambling.”
“Or both, and he just hasn’t been caught lately. For Swann, it’s like having a snake in the nest ready to swallow the eggs whole if need be to support his expensive habits. It’s tricky, though, for big sister Mai. Tomas says she adores Liang, and, from what I saw today, Tomas is not far behind in the Liang Fan Club either. Liang could somehow be the leak that’s letting the Swann profits ooze out the bucket.”
“Yeah, out of the bucket and up Liang’s nose.”
“Alright, number three was pretty good, Geo, but let’s move along in the hit parade. The AC’s starting to lose the battle against this oppressive heat.” We looked around. Across the street, the Biltmore parking lot was filling up with midday shoppers dashing over the burning, black tarmac and into the cool relief of one of the upscale shops.
“Moving right along then. Number two and number one are tied for first place.”
“That’s cheating, Geo.”
“You won’t think it’s cheating when I tell you what they are, but now I’m not going to tell you because you called me a cheater.” Geo folded his arms across his chest, smiling like the cat who just swallowed the canary. Because Geo is my cousin, we’ve been friends almost since he could walk and talk. He knows how to torment me from years of practice. Or more accurately, we know how to torment each other.
“Okay, okay, you’re killing me with the suspense. I take it all back. The rules have permanently changed. It is now fair to have ties in the hit parade countdown.”
“Number one and number two, which may or may not be related in some strange, convoluted way: Sylvester Swane has a history of co-ownership in small, privately owned businesses.”
“You haven’t impressed me yet in the least. I already knew that.”
“You’re the one with the short gratification fuse, Sammy. I’m building up the suspense for you. Just the way you like it. Usually Swane’s business choices are wildly successful. And, usually, Sammy, you might want to drum roll here, Swane takes out a life insurance policy on his joint owners and, through the years, Swane has co-owned about twenty businesses of all sorts and varieties.”
“You sort of have my attention now, Geo.”
“Out of those twenty businesses, in almost one-third of those instances, one of the principal owners has died within a year of Swane’s arrival, and Swane has, number one: collected on the life insurance; and number two: assumed the deceased’s portion of the business. Then in a majority position and under Swane’s astute guidance, the fledgling business’s profits shoot through the roof.”
“Alrighty then, Geo. You now have my full attention! Did these people die of natural causes?”
“In every case, yes, or at least they appeared to. There’s also some indication that these people may have had health risks when Swane first formed his partnership with them. That I’m not certain of yet. With today’s HIPPA regulations, that kind of information is much harder to obtain, but I’m working on it.”
“So why would Swane call me in if there was a possibility of me discovering this? Maybe it’s just a coincident
al pattern.”
“Seven out of twenty young CEOs and other high-placed owners die of natural causes within a year of Swane’s involvement with them? And you think it’s coincidental? It’s almost a statistical certainty, Sammy, that it’s not coincidental.”
“I hate it when you talk statistics. I don’t get it, though. Why would Swane ever allow us onboard if we might discover this kind of information?”
“Well, I don’t want to burst your bubble, Sammy, but there’s an obvious answer.”
“There is?”
“Swane thinks we aren’t good enough to uncover something of that nature. I think he’s using us to placate Michael’s suspicions. After all, I dug way, way down following my intuition and applying all of my investigative know-how to uncover this pattern. It was hours and hours of work, as you probably can’t imagine since you can’t even bear to hear me recount how I found the information for even a few minutes, much less do the cascading searches required.”
“Oooh, the heat is making you testy, Geo,” I continued, ignoring his sarcasm. “So you think Swane hired his old friend’s daughter, mainly because I’m inexperienced, just to placate Michael’s suspicions? And Swane never imagined our investigative powers were so formidable?”
“Sad, but almost certainly true.”
“Well, that just pisses me off!”
“Thought it would.”
“That just makes me want to expose Swane every which way I can!”
“Right, and he’s the one signing your checks, or to be more specific, our checks.”
“No, technically, Mai signs ‘em, but I’m still pissed off.” I sat for a while, steaming from the insights as well as the rising heat in the cramped confines of the car.
My voice rose another notch. “The other thing that pisses me off about this business of going undercover into these little family-owned and operated businesses, Geo, is that we inevitably, and I mean inevitably, find out something the owners would never want us to divulge! So then we’re sort of accomplices in their crimes!”
“Slow down, slow down. First of all, I’d call us more like knowledgeable bystanders, not accomplices. Secondly, I haven’t completely finished this line of research yet. And thirdly, Sammy, you love going undercover. Every line of work has a downside. This kind of discovery just happens to be the downside of our line of work.”
“Yeah, kind of like Evel Knievel, and the downside is falling into the Grand Canyon if your motorcycle doesn’t fly all the way across to the opposite canyon wall.”
“Exactly, but with a lot less drama,” Geo said dryly.
Besides Geo’s extraordinary investigative powers, his calm rationality acted as a salve and counterbalance to my tendency to fly off the handle. “I hear you. I also hear something coming out of Snoops right now.”
We both stopped talking and looked attentively at the speakers. Our car was still running to keep the AC on with Snoops plugged into the splitter in the cigarette lighter. For the first time, we heard Liang speak in English.
Unfortunately, we heard him say, “Ted, I found this bugging device adhered to my briefcase. Would you be so good as to track down its origins and the identity of the tapper, if possible, and get back to me? There’s an extra three thousand dollar bonus in it for you if you are successful.” Ted just happened to be the name of the stodgy, old security guard at the base of Central One.
“Shit! Shit, shit, shit!” I yelled, pounding the dashboard with my fist.
“Even I’m starting to feel a little like Evel Knievel, sailing out over the Grand Canyon now,” Geo said glumly. “We may actually be in deep shit.”
“Yeah and five hundred dollars for that damn little bug wasted. For nothing! Worse than nothing. We may get found out, arrested, or who knows what!”
“Perhaps all is not lost, Sammy. I suggest you tell Swane. We know he probably isn’t averse to such practices as bugging to find out what’s going on in his firm. Or better yet, why not tell Michael? He may be able to smooth this out behind the scenes.”
I calmed down after mulling over Geo’s suggestion of approaching Michael. Getting a little more inside information from Michael was on my to-do list anyway. I’d just slip in the little part about bugging Liang’s briefcase and get our asses off the hook at the same time. I breathed a sigh of relief and said, “Well, let’s pull the plug on good ol’ Snoops and get the hell out of this hot car. I’m heading back to Swann headquarters in my Mazda to continue my research. I agree that your Top Five tops my Top Five, but we still have no actual evidence of anything.”
“Picky, picky, picky. On a more somber note, though, be careful, Sammy. Don’t forget the slashed tires.”
Chapter 16
At three in the morning, July 17, a light-blue van glided through the open gate of the ten acre property nestled against the desert mountains. The isolated home was in New River, north of Phoenix. The nearest neighbors lived a mile away. Even so, the driver doused the headlights before approaching his target.
The van crunched across the gravel driveway toward the solitary, sprawling ranch house. No lights inside or out. Rustic pine poles spaced evenly across the full length of the home supported the veranda. Oversized picture windows spanned the front of the house like dark, watching eyes under the hood of the veranda. The drapes stood open.
The unsuspecting inhabitant seldom missed watching the sun set every evening, and this evening had been no exception. The sun had emptied its heart out on the land before dropping behind the western mountains in a burst of fiery shafts across the sky, reddening the spiny ridges of the saguaros that jutted out in apparent randomness over the landscape: lonely sentries unable to move or protect the resident within, who slept fitfully.
Two months ago his wife had just walked away from their twenty-year marriage. No rhyme or reason to it as far as he could tell. Besides drowning himself in work, watching the sunset was one of the few times he felt peace. Two old rocking chairs stood on the porch. He’d sat in one, rocking away as the western sky flamed into extinction. The other rocker beside him empty and still. Then he’d cooked a simple dinner. Worked a few more hours until he could think no more and went to bed.
With its windows tinted black on every side, the van settled into a soft stop in the driveway. A dented, rusty fender barely missed scraping the tire by the passenger door. Another large gash ran like an abrasion from fender to fender on the driver’s side. The driver remained seated, listening, and heard only the mournful keen of a desert nighthawk swooping through the jutting outcrops of rock, sounding like something between a whisper and a scream in the dry night air.
He opened the van door, dressed in black from head to toe. Face flattened into obscurity by a black hosiery mask. Eerie in the faint moonlight, but no one awake to sense the rush of fear. The black figure slid a bulky backpack across from the passenger seat. Shouldered it. Shifted the backrest forward on the driver’s side. Extracted an AK47. Then he stood upright in the moonlight.
He was at full combat readiness, except for the shoes which cost him $200, high-end basketball shoes. Red, the only color that was left on the shelves when he purchased the trendy style yesterday. The intruder hopped lightly off the gravel over to the grassy area to deaden the sound of his entry. Then in swift, practiced strides, he edged toward the left side of the home. Halted at the corner of the house. Listened. Peered into the windows. No new sounds. No lights anywhere, not even street lights. For miles.
The intruder slipped along the north side of the home. A veranda, similar to the one that graced the front of the house, stretched the length of the back. A desert mountain rose up at the end of the property. Light from the sliver of moon smeared the rear windows with a milky reflective glow that obscured his vision as he attempted to peer within. His eyes adjusted. One of the windows slanted outward. Unlatched. Good.
Even in the heat of summer, the resident liked to hear the desert sounds at night. Besides, almost no one ever traveled to the very end of the road where he l
ived. The inhabitant and his wife bought the home for its solitude and desert beauty. Or at least he thought they had been in agreement on that. In his sleep, he rolled over, troubled by his dreams.
The masked man stood stock still. He heard the rustling of the sheets through the open window as the resident tossed in his sleep. Then all fell quiet again. The intruder waited four minutes, motionless. Timing it on the muted digital dial of his watch. No further movement. The darkly clad man shifted the window up a quarter of an inch, testing. The hinges appeared to be well lubricated. The dark gloves steadily pushed up the window until the opening was the size of a man. He slipped in.
The next few seconds erupted fast, seamless, and deadly. Carefully rehearsed and prepared, just as he’d learned in an earlier, military life. He shut the window. Silently hoisted the AK47 and blasted the sleeping figure in a strafing zigzag pattern, starting with the heart. Moving up to the face and then back down the body leaving a series of bloody holes forming a Z.
The intruder lay the AK47 on the corner of the bed where the sheets were still white. Dipped his gloved finger in the oozing blood pooling beside the dead man’s chest. Then scrawled a vivid pictorial on the wall, carefully studied and memorized earlier. He peeled off his black latex gloves with the blood balled up inside. Folded the balled up wad into the Velcro-enclosed pocket on his right thigh. Then he unpeeled the Velcro pocket enclosure on his left thigh and donned fresh latex gloves. Extracted a small flashlight from the same pocket. Switched it on and swiftly strode down the hall, flashing the light into each room.
With professional efficiency, he opened the file drawers. Scanned through the tabs, the light of the flashlight zipping along the neat handwriting centered on each tab. He slid open one drawer after another. The room held six, five-drawer filing cabinets. In the fourth cabinet, near the middle of the alphabet, he found what he was looking for. He extracted that file and set it on the table. Finished systematically going through the rest of the files. Scoured the desk for shadow drives. Hard disks. Found none. Unhooked the laptop. Flipped it closed. Strode back into the bedroom carrying the laptop and the file. The corpse remained sprawled on the bed, unchanged, except for the spreading pool of blood. The intruder took no notice. He withdrew the backpack from his shoulders and reached inside for a packet of white powder. Then slipped the laptop and the file into the backpack.
Baby Brother Blues (Sammy Dick, PI Series: Book 1) Page 12
