“And did he leave the ballroom right away?”
“As I recall he had coffee and dessert and then spoke to our national director for a few minutes.”
“So he left the ballroom at about ten o’clock?”
“That’s probably correct.”
This was vaguely disappointing but hardly surprising. If Lightstone left the ballroom at ten, then he wouldn’t have had time for a liaison in his room, since she left the hotel at about the same time. Then again, he was looking for the connection between Lightstone and Julian Mellow, not between the senator and a murder victim. The notion that Sarah was right, that his obsession with Mellow had spun out of control, was beginning to look depressingly credible.
“I hope you’re planning to emphasize that the senator was very emphatic in support of additional tort reform. Capping damage awards and limiting class actions, while a good start, is only—”
“Yes, I definitely picked up on that point.”
“That’s great. Because a reporter from a trade publication was insistent that the senator was less than firm in his support of additional reform. He pestered us all the way to the hotel exit and I practically had to restrain him from following the senator out the door.”
“The senator left the hotel?”
“He was staying elsewhere, the Fairmont, I believe.”
“He left the hotel at ten o’clock?”
“Give or take. Why is it important when the—”
“You’ve been very helpful, Peg, thanks a million.”
He hung up and made a notation on the cover of the senator’s folder: Exited Saint Francis same time as hooker who was murdered next morning. Still no obvious connection to Julian Mellow, or to Billy Sandifer for that matter. But conspiracy theories were built on thinner stuff than what he had. He added the folder to the “active” pile on his desk and changed into biking gear.
TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 8
Chapter 11
Sophie DuVal shifted into low gear as the green Renault wagon lurched to the top of the mountain. The car was ten years old, practically brand-new by Kamalian standards, and badly in need of a tune-up. The engine began to wheeze and buck as the incline steepened.
“Come on, we’re almost there.” She goosed the gas pedal. Moments later she crested the mountain, one of the smaller peaks in the Saint Eustace chain that formed Kamalia’s eastern border. In the distance she saw a crowd of guards patrolling the border crossing. When Kamalia’s government was involved there were always more men than necessary—it was President Boymond’s one effective strategy for countering Kamalia’s crushing unemployment rate. Since nationalizing the country’s major industries, unemployment had soared from an already burdensome 10 percent to close to half the population. So every government installation swarmed with uniformed men standing around trying halfheartedly to look occupied. At least twenty men guarded the border, as if anyone would want to enter Kamalia. Leaving was strictly forbidden under Le Père’s regime, but you didn’t need twenty men to enforce that. You’d think Boymond would encourage emigration, given the lack of jobs and food. But a flood of emigration would look bad, would spread the word that this once progressive country, rich in minerals, a beacon of hope to the rest of sub-Saharan Africa, had squandered its potential.
She turned off the main road a few miles from the border onto a rutted dirt road, which she followed for several spine-rattling miles. Dense brush crowded the roadside, forming an impenetrable wall. Long branches and hanging vines slapped the car’s windshield and front bumper, testament to the small volume of traffic the road saw lately. Hundreds of such roads crisscrossed the landscape of eastern Kamalia, hacked out from the brush to allow smugglers access to the country’s interior, where they had once made a thriving market in small appliances, blue jeans, and other luxury goods brought in from Europe and America. Now there was no money even for such duty-free imports and the jungle was gradually reclaiming the largely unused roads.
The jolting ride felt endless, and she was beginning to fear that she had turned onto the wrong road when it opened up to the right, revealing a ramshackle hut in a small clearing. She parked the Renault in front and got out.
“C’est moi, Sophie DuVal,” she called out with as much force as she could muster. She felt small and vulnerable in the isolated clearing, and she knew she was being watched. A few moments later the hut’s only door opened and a man stepped out. He was short and thickly built, covered head to foot in denim, the ultimate status symbol. He wasn’t a Kamalian, she guessed, and not just from his clothes. Kamalians tended to be taller than their neighbors, their skin darker. But they exuded an air of resignation in the slump of their shoulders, the tired, cynical squint of their eyes, the shambling way they walked, as if no destination could possibly be worth serious effort. Poor Kamalia, once the shining star of the continent, a magnet for the world’s economists looking to analyze and replicate its remarkable turnaround. This man coming toward her, his stride purposeful, his expression one of easy confidence, was no Kamalian.
“We were beginning to worry,” he said as two more men, both short and stocky, emerged from the hut. They held rifles.
“My car was just barely up to the task. I don’t know how we’re going to make the return trip loaded down.”
“You are alone?”
She nodded. Nevertheless, his eyes continued to move, taking nothing for granted.
“You have the money?”
She walked back to the car and returned with a canvas bag, which she handed to him. “Forty-five thousand dollars, American dollars, all twenties,” she said.
He thrust his hand into the bag, and for a moment she feared he was going to count every bill, which could take forever. Instead, he took a long, deep breath, savoring the sensual pleasure of so much American cash, and removed his hand.
“The weapons?” she said, eager to be gone. She had come to this place for a cause, a good cause; he’d been driven there by greed, and the difference in their motives made her uncomfortable.
He signaled to the two men behind him, who withdrew into the hut and reappeared moments later carrying armfuls of AK-74 assault rifles. She opened the back of the wagon and they began loading.
“How does a beautiful Kamalian get her hands on this much cash?” the leader asked her. “Twenty families in Kamalia could live very comfortably on what you have given me.”
“I don’t ask where you get the rifles.”
“As long as you have a reliable source…”
“I feel the same way. Can’t your men move faster?”
“They were not counting on having to load the car themselves.”
She frowned and followed one of the men into the hut, where she looked around and estimated that they had loaded half the rifles. Stacked by the door were several boxes of ammunition. She was about to pick up a box when one of the men stepped directly in front of her. He was a head shorter, and sweating heavily at his brow and armpits.
“Move,” she said firmly.
He didn’t budge. The other man appeared in the doorway, took in the situation, and smiled broadly as he left the hut empty-handed.
“I asked you to move.”
He touched her arm and with his other hand began massaging his crotch. When she stepped back he moved closer. He smelled mushroomy, damp and earthy. She moved to her right but he blocked her escape, edging closer to her. He placed a hand on her right shoulder and let it slide down to her breast.
“One last time, back off,” she said, swatting away his hand.
He slowly shook his head as his eyes roved up and down her body. In one fast moment she reached to her left, grabbed one of the rifles the men had been carrying when they first appeared in the doorway, and jammed the barrel into his abdomen, forcing him back several steps. Then she aimed the rifle at his chest.
“Load the car,” she said. “Now.”
His lips curled into a leering smile as he stepped closer to her, absently pushing the rifle to the side
as if it were a large purse. His breath warmed her neck as he touched her waist. She lowered the gun and fired, hitting him in the shin. He crumpled to the floor, shrieking. Almost immediately the other two men stormed into the hut. The leader took in the scene and reached for his fallen comrade’s loaded rifle, which was leaning against the wall. She pointed her rifle at his chest.
“Don’t touch that,” she said. He froze, arm outstretched. “You see what I’m capable of.” They all regarded the writhing figure on the dirt floor, blood oozing from his right leg.
After a few tense moments the leader let his arm fall to his side.
“Idiot,” he sneered at his wounded comrade. “You want to ruin this for us?”
“Now you will have to help load the car,” Sophie said to the leader. “This other one won’t be of much use.” She nodded to her moaning victim.
The loading went much faster after the shooting. Soon, Sophie was on her way back to Villeneuve. But a hundred yards down the dirt road she stopped the car, leaned her head against the steering wheel, and began to hyperventilate. That morning, picking up the cash from a courier in the capital, she’d sensed that she was setting in motion a course of events that would gather momentum until she could no longer control it, and this thought had terrified her to the point of nausea. That Julian Mellow had somehow managed to move so many dollars into one of the most restrictive countries on the planet had emboldened her, however. He wouldn’t desert her, she felt certain, not after what had been done to his son. Julian had never liked her—too political, too Third World, too black for his son, the crown prince of American finance—and he had blamed her for luring Matthew to Africa. But since his son’s death he’d done whatever she asked.
She couldn’t imagine herself actually using the weapons she bought with his money. She’d simply deliver them to the small band of comrades in the Front who, like her, were committed to overturning Boymond’s hated regime. But that animal in the hut had touched her, the first touch by a man in over two years, since Matthew. Firing the rifle had felt so right, so easy. It was that thought, that she might be capable of much more than shattering the leg of a despicable dog of a human being, that made her gasp for air, unable to drive.
What else was she capable of?
Chapter 12
Zach Springer scrambled into a taxi at San Francisco International Airport and gave the address of the Mission police station. The trip to San Francisco, booked at the last minute and therefore exorbitantly expensive, represented a sort of turning point. Heretofore, his determination to bring down Julian Mellow had taken the form of computer searches, a few phone calls, the close reading of dozens and dozens of business and finance publications for morsels of information, potentially damning but inevitably innocuous, about his nemesis. He contributed his share of monthly expenses from his dwindling savings and spent little on himself. Now, with the trip to San Francisco, checking in at JFK as Arthur Sandler, paying for the flight with Arthur Sandler’s credit card, he’d crossed a line, investing serious money in what Sarah considered, not without merit, a destructive obsession. He hadn’t told her about the trip—the credit card statement would be sent to Arthur Sandler’s mail drop on Columbus Avenue. He’d be back before bedtime, the six-hour return flight offering plenty of time to make up an alibi for his whereabouts.
He’d made a few phone calls before leaving and found out that the investigation of Danielle Bruneau was being handled by a Detective Stephen Flaherty. He asked for Flaherty at the front desk of the modern, red-brick Mission station and, since he hadn’t called ahead, was pleased to be led back by a uniformed policeman to a room full of steel desks.
“Steve, you have a visitor,” his escort called across the room. A burly man, about fifty, wearing a white shirt, sleeves rolled up, collar open, and a dark blue tie, stood up and approached. “He says he has something on the Bruneau case.”
“Thank you for seeing me,” Zach began, sitting on the wooden chair next to Flaherty’s desk. “I know you’re busy and—”
“What do you have?”
Zach took a deep breath, aware that he was crossing another line by sharing his obsession with someone other than Sarah—with a law enforcement official, no less. He reached into his Hermès briefcase, a $1,800 indulgence from fatter days, now badly scuffed, and took out one of the photos of Billy Sandifer that he’d printed from the internet. It showed him leaving prison.
“This is actually a few years old, but I’m sure you can—”
“Who is this?” Flaherty took the photo.
“His name is Billy Sandifer. Back in the nineties, he was involved in the antiglobalization movement.”
Flaherty dropped the photo on the desk. “Doesn’t ring a bell.”
“Well, his past isn’t really why I’m here, in fact I don’t exactly understand what the antiglobalization movement has to do with Danielle Bruneau.”
“Dan Bowdin.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“It’s officially the Dan Bowdin murder investigation. That was his real name. Danielle Bruneau was…I guess it was his professional name.”
“Oh. Well, as I was saying, I don’t know what Billy Sandifer has to do with…Dan Bowdin.”
“Yesterday we had more than twenty so-called tips about Danielle or Dan or whatever he or she was called. A parade of freaks through this station, each one of them with a story. So I’d be grateful if you’d get to the point.”
“Right. You see, the night she was killed, Danielle was at the Saint Francis Hotel.”
“Which we know.”
“And so was Harry Lightstone, Senator Harry Lightstone.”
“You mean that guy?” He nodded across the room to a television set on top of a filing cabinet. Zach squinted to make out the picture and felt a creepy sense of unease. Lightstone was speaking before Independence Hall in Philadelphia, his wife at his side. The volume was turned down, but the crawl at the bottom of the screen announced his candidacy for president.
“Your point?” the detective said.
Zach turned away from the television. “They left the hotel together. I checked with a representative of the organization the senator was speaking before.”
“Are you suggesting that the senator murdered Danielle?” His smirk suggested that this was the freakiest theory he’d heard yet.
“Have you talked to the senator?”
Flaherty stood up. “I need a transfer out of this station,” he said to no one in particular, then looked directly at Zach. “Yesterday we had a guy—and I use the term loosely—come in claiming he saw a dwarf entering her apartment at the time of the murder. A dwarf strangled a six-foot trannie with a belt. Right. But I’ll take a killer dwarf any day over a candidate for president.”
Zach stood and picked up the photograph. “This guy, Sandifer, flew to San Francisco the morning of the murder on the private jet of Julian Mellow.” Mellow’s name evoked no reaction from Flaherty. “He’s one of the richest man in America. In the world, in fact.”
“Oh, so he killed her?”
“That same morning, just a few minutes after Sandifer got off the jet, Senator Lightstone got on it and flew back to New York, where he met with Mellow in the back of a car.”
“And the connection to Danielle-slash-Dan?”
“The senator leaves the hotel at the same time as a murder victim. The next morning, he flies to New York on a jet that has just deposited a convicted felon in this city.”
“Wait a minute, convicted felon?”
“Sandifer spent eight years in Williston.”
Flaherty took the picture from him and studied it. “What for?”
“He blew up an office building in Boston.”
“Nice. But I still don’t get the connection.” He handed Zach the photo.
“If you just ask around…”
“No one saw anyone coming or going that morning.”
“But what was he doing here? On the same plane as the senator. A private jet.”
“Should I leave the photo with you?” he said.
“Sure, we’ll add it to our files,” Flaherty said.
“Thanks for making the trip worthwhile,” he said, and snatched back the photo.
• • •
Fifteen minutes later, Zach stood in front of the house where Danielle Bruneau, née Dan Bowdin, had been strangled. He had no idea what had drawn him there other than a vague sense—make that desperate hope—that her death was somehow connected to Julian Mellow in the person of an ex-con radical. In one hand he held a photograph of Billy Sandifer. He had planned to show the photograph to passersby and perhaps even ring a few neighborhood doorbells. But he felt his spirit flag, and the sudden recognition of the absurdity of his presence in the Castro on a Tuesday afternoon made him at once heavy-footed and lightheaded. In any case, there were few pedestrians on Church Street. He walked slowly back to Castro and stopped into a coffee shop. He bought a bottle of water and while paying he showed the photograph to the cashier.
“Never saw him, but you can hang it up there.”
He pointed to the wall adjacent to the front door on which were taped hundreds of cards and flyers advertising concerts, massage therapists, sublets, tattoo artists, and music lessons. He borrowed a pen and tape from the cashier and, in large block letters, wrote Have you seen this man? along with Arthur Sandler’s email address. He hung up the photo, momentarily energized by having accomplished something, however trivial, and left.
Presidents' Day Page 6
