Death and Dark Money

by Seeley James

  “I should never have cleaned up after you. I saw him. He was a kind old man, Tom Duncan. And there he was with his head opened like a smashed melon, blood and brains spilled out all over the place. It’s like you said, there’s no reason to bury the dead. He comes back to me when I close my eyes.”

  She went back to her pillow, muffling her moans.

  “You really should get up.” Koven rubbed her back. “Some fresh air would be good for you.”

  She continued to sob. Her right hand reached out and grabbed his.

  He patted her hand. “I have to go.”

  “Stay with me.”

  “Sabel is causing trouble.” He pried her hand from his and stood. “I have to end it.”

  She sat up. “I told you that girl is a witch!”

  “Not the girl. I don’t know why, but Arab countries are lining up to kill her.” He sighed. “It’s her father. He’s been recording things.”

  Marthe threw her arms around him. “We’re one of them now, the ultra-rich. We don’t have to be afraid of the police anymore. Go kill them. Kill them all. We can get away with anything.”

  She picked up her file again and plowed into her fingernails.

  “What are you doing?” Koven asked.

  “There’s blood stuck under them and I can’t get it out.”

  He grabbed her hand. “The blood is coming from your fingers because of the excessive picking. Stop that.”

  “It doesn’t matter.” She breathed hard and sank into the covers, muffling her voice. “I still can’t close my eyes without seeing his blood everywhere.”

  He rose, crossed to the bathroom and returned with water and a bottle of pills. “Here, these will help you sleep.”

  Her buried head refused to rise.

  As much as he relied on her help, she wasn’t in the mood. What’s the use in trying to drag her to her feet if she’s going to wallow in self-pity? There’s no helping some people. He would let her find her own way out.

  He left the medicine.

  Outside his room, Velox guards waited and ushered him downstairs. Kasey pointed the way to the basement down a stone spiral and through two heavy steel doors to a long storeroom. At the back, under a bare lightbulb, was a stainless steel cage.

  Inside stood Alan Sabel and his bodyguard, Agent Dhanpal, bound with hand and ankle cuffs.

  “Goddamn it, Koven,” Alan yelled. “Let me out of here this minute.”

  Koven approached the bars and examined them. “Amazing how fate works, isn’t it? This ancient dungeon was remodeled to keep the treasures of the castle safe from thieves. And now it serves to keep the thieves in. I doubt we’re in danger of you stealing any of these relics. You don’t see the value in small objects. You can only see values in companies and technology and intellectual property. So why would you stoop so low as to steal my trade secrets?”

  Alan stepped close to the bars, snorting with anger. “You let Dhanpal go and we can talk.”

  “Let your minions loose?” Koven laughed. “I was told he took out five Velox men before they subdued him. Do you think I’m dumb enough to let him wander the castle? No. You talk or I take him out and shoot him.”

  “What’s your endgame? You think the police will just look the other way? You’re finished, Koven.”

  “How could a man of your position so grossly underestimate the power of money?” Koven backed up and waved his hands around him. “The police have already murdered your friend Benning.”

  Kasey stepped out of the shadows. “Hey, they didn’t do nothing. That was my guys.”

  Alan scoffed. “You hire only the brightest.”

  “It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter.” Koven waved his arms to quiet everyone. “I spoke to Katy Hellman this morning. Her reporters, notorious for hacking crime victim voice mails, are working to hack your recordings. She said no one on Earth could stop me except some dead guy.”

  “What dead guy?” A new voice came from the dark.

  “Who’s there?” Koven spun around, looking down the gloomy hall.

  Senator Bill Hyde stepped into the dim light, his watery eyes lowered. “What dead guy did she say could stop you?”

  “Someone called Oberstdrogen.”

  “Never heard of him.” Hyde came closer. “I was worried she meant Jesus Christ.”

  Koven scowled at him. “What are you doing here? You’re supposed to be at the office.”

  “We ran out of gin.”

  CHAPTER 32

  Carlos held the dim blue light over my shoulder while I opened the electrical box and flipped the breaker marked “kitchen”. Nothing will get a family man outside quicker than turning off his wife’s kitchen at dinner time. Carlos backed into the bushes.

  My phone vibrated. The Major was calling at a terrible time, but I answered it anyway.

  “The kidnapper is on the line,” she said. “Says he’s ready for the exchange.”

  “Patch him in.”

  A second later I heard an electronically altered voice. “Jacob, go to the Joyce Kilmer Service Area on the New Jersey Turnpike and wait for further instructions.”

  “No.”

  “What?”

  “If you want to meet someone in New Jersey, try OKCupid.com,” I said. “Where did you get that stupid voice scrambler? It sounds like a prop from an ’80s movie.”

  “If you don’t do what I say, the boy dies.”

  “So what? You already killed his dad, which tells me you plan to kill him too. I don’t know—or care—about either of them.”

  “But you agreed to the ransom.” His mechanical voice rose in pitch. “You have to do what I say.”

  “Or you’ll kill some unfortunate teenager? You think that’s going to motivate me? I got news for you—thirty-nine people were murdered in this country yesterday. That many will die today and tomorrow. You’re threatening me with a statistic.”

  “You don’t fool me, Jacob Stearne. You went to Tokyo to save Zola. You want the boy safe.”

  “Listen up, stupid: You want me. And you want me bad. You’ve proven it. You tried to kill me outside Rip Blackson’s house and failed. You tried and failed at Harrison’s. You tried and failed to frame me for two murders, and now you have some dumb idea that you can trap me in a murder-suicide scenario and make it look like I killed all those people because I was having an affair with a fifteen-year-old boy. So, no.”

  “That’s not our plan.”

  “I’m busy right now and can’t talk. Text me your number and I’ll call you back later. You can make up a new plan and tell me all about it.”

  I clicked off while he struggled to reply.

  Six seconds later, Captain Cates of the Montgomery County Police Department, Criminal Investigations Division, rounded the side of his house with a flashlight and a jacket tossed over his casual slacks and shirt. He hadn’t bothered with a hat for his gray crewcut.

  “Holy mother of God,” he said.

  “Of all the accusations against me, that’s a first.” I flipped the breaker back on for him.

  “What do you want?”

  “The bullet David Gottleib gave me that’s now sitting in evidence.” I closed the breaker box with a slam.

  “I can’t give you that,” he said. “It’s not my case, and besides—”

  “I can deliver the killer.”

  “You know who it is?”

  “I can deliver. Do you want him? Or should I try working with Lovett’s captain?”

  He chewed the inside of his cheek while he figured out how I knew his departmental rival and how badly he would love to show up the prick.

  He said, “Let’s go inside.”

  “I’m not exactly presentable.” I pulled his flashlight to my face, showing off my blue, black, and yellow swollen eye and severely damaged cheek, complete with butterfly stitches.

  Despite his revulsion, we went in the house, leaving poor Carlos hidden in the cold. Cates walked me into his study before his wife and teenaged daughters saw me
. We sat in leather chairs in a small home office crammed with cardboard boxes overflowing with case notes. A small, cheap desk stood next to us and a packed bookshelf filled the wall behind it.

  “Lovett put out an APB on you.” He rubbed his face and sighed. “Something about a murder in Tokyo involving one of your guns. It’s my duty to turn you in.”

  “You’re going to hang with me as the situation develops throughout the night. If I don’t deliver the killer by sunrise, you can bring me in.”

  “Yeah,” he said and scratched his jaw. “The NPA detective argued with him. She says you didn’t do it.”

  “She’s here?” My voice was unintentionally high and loud. “The lady from Tokyo?”

  His eyes snapped up to mine. “Before you get a hard-on, let’s keep focused on why I shouldn’t call a squad car.”

  “Yeah. OK.” I reined in my breathing and took a long, slow look around the room to relax.

  Elbows on my knees, I rubbed my palms together. “First, you have to tell me what happened in Nasiriyah.”

  “You really don’t remember?”

  I shrugged.

  “It was the early days of the invasion.” He crossed his ankle over his knee and leaned back. “Saddam’s Republican Guard platoons were abandoning their posts quicker than we could engage with them, which was fine with us. We didn’t want casualties. Lieutenant Koven was itching to be a hero, so he took his platoon off the map. Later, in the debrief, his sergeants said he was hunting for Iraqis. He found them all right. He ran into a company of them. The center of their formation fell back.”

  I put my hand over my eyes. “And he fell for it? Drove into the middle?”

  “Exactly. Classic ambush maneuver that predates Alexander the Great. He was surrounded—they had him in a crossfire. Three Iraqi snipers began picking them off. Koven and his men hunkered down and called for assistance, but they were way outside our contained area. The Iraqis started shooting anyone who manned the BMG mounted on a Humvee. Koven’s men said he freaked. He crumpled up in a ball and covered himself with body armor.”

  Cates grabbed two bottles of water from a mini fridge next to his desk and tossed me one.

  “That’s when you showed up,” Cates said. “You jumped a wall, running scared, and thought you were saved. When the men explained the situation, you volunteered to take the .50 BMG and wipe out the Iraqis. That’s when Koven came out of his shell, ordered you not to take the gunner’s turret because there wasn’t enough ammo. They were down to forty-nine bullets and there were more Iraqis than bullets. You argued that his men were still heavily armed. He said you were a spy and tried to shoot you with his service weapon.”

  The memory came flooding back to me in a hot rush. Mercury had been talking to me, guiding me over walls and telling me where to turn. He’d been right on the mark every time. When Koven tried to kill me, Mercury told me when to duck left and right and then when to grab Koven’s weapon. I wrenched it out of his hands and turned it on him. The rest of the platoon nodded as if to say, “Please do it. Get rid of the lieutenant for us so we can get out of here.” Zola stepped in front of Koven and told me to think about it.

  I gave the pistol to Zola and jumped up in the Humvee. A bullet pinged off the sheet metal and I ducked.

  Mercury told me to quit worrying, stand up, and let him guide me. With Mercury telling me where to shoot, I knocked off twenty-nine Iraqis, starting with the snipers and ending with the commanding officer. When their commanding officer went down, the rest of them disappeared like mobile homes in a tornado.

  The surviving Marines were pretty happy about being liberated from certain death. They carried me around on their shoulders, gave me a Hershey’s bar, and crowned me with an ammo belt. I awarded them the remaining .50 BMG cartridges like a king handing out knighthoods.

  Koven exploded in a jealous rage and tried to kill me again. But Mercury was a step ahead of him. With his sketchy but divine guidance, I stole a Humvee and drove back to my company.

  “And the Army never gave us back the Humvee,” Captain Cates said.

  “Koven’s version was different?” I asked.

  “His version omitted you altogether. Zola, Gottleib, and Blackson recanted their original stories and resubmitted versions that sounded like Koven had coached them. But your story became legend in the battalion. I was determined to dig out the truth when the brass decided to make the run to Baghdad the next day. We had Koven reassigned stateside at the first opportunity.”

  Mercury, at the small desk next to us, wiped a tear from his eye. Seven-Death stood behind him, giving me his bug-eyed glare.

  After you’ve seen a god so hungover he can’t stand up, it takes extreme will power not to laugh in his face, especially when he’s doing his fire-and-brimstone shtick.

  Mercury said, Oh, those were good times, dawg. You listened to me back then, none of this juvenile backtalk.

  I said, Tell me something useful. How am I going to get the Zola kid back?

  Mercury said, Beats me. Your little chat with the kidnapper took me by surprise. I’m out.

  Mercury stood up as if to leave when the wings on his helmet wiggled. Oh, dude, they’re going to kill Blackson. You might want to warn him—unless you still don’t care about anyone but yourself.

  I said, What’s that supposed to mean?

  Mercury said, Harrison was our best chance, man. You let him twist in the wind—he was the psycho to all the rich and famous people in DC. We coulda gone big with him, ya know what I’m saying?

  I said, He’s alive and well.

  Mercury said, What? How do you know?

  I said, Because I challenged him to be as much a man as any eighteen-year-old private and he rose to the occasion. I’ve given that challenge a hundred times—just before the shooting starts—and you can see it in their eyes. I saw it in Harrison’s eyes. He’s a fat, lazy, self-absorbed intellectual, but he sure as hell wasn’t going to let his wife die.

  “So, who killed Gottleib?” Captain Cates asked.

  “I’m about to find out.” I told him my plan for catching the killer and asked him for logistical support.

  He refused to let any officers risk their careers on such a dumb idea, but he was willing to watch.

  And bring me in if I failed.

  That left me short on manpower.

  Ten minutes later, I was knocking on the door of a guy named Avi Damari. He was the quiet guy at David Gottleib’s funeral. He kept up the silence when he answered the door, just held it open a foot and stared at me.

  He looked over my shoulder at Carlos, weighed our intentions, then opened the door and gestured for us to come in. He dropped into a chair at a small dining table and waited until we were seated.

  “Where did you work after you left the Marines?” I asked.

  “Bullshit question.”

  “OK, answer the question I should’ve asked.”

  “My last job was at Velox Deployment.”

  “Jesus,” I said. “You were assigned to Koven’s firm.”

  He nodded.

  Either he’d been hit in the head real hard or he was wicked smart; it was hard to tell. “Why is Koven harah? And what does that mean exactly?”

  “Hebrew for shit. You already know why.”

  “Because he tried to kill me?”

  Avi shook his head.

  I could feel his hatred like radiator heat and began to understand him better. “Because he was a coward at Nasiriyah.”

  Avi gave me a single nod.

  “Why did you quit Velox?” I asked.

  “Shane assigned me to open an office in Tel Aviv. I was excited about going home until I found out what they did.”

  “What makes you think Koven killed Gottleib?” I asked.

  “Professional.”

  Laconic guys can be hard to understand. I glanced at Carlos to see if he followed the logic.

  Carlos said, “Only a coward contracts a hit.”

  Avi nodded at him. The two were
wired into some kind of assassins’ code of ethics. Real men do their own killing.

  Several pieces fell into place and a few questions in my head clicked closed while several others opened up. Jago walked away in Tokyo, which made him a coward in the assassin’s worldview. And a suspect in mine. But a suspect for which of the hundreds of crimes around him? And why?

  “Do you know who pulled the trigger?” I asked.

  Avi shook his head.

  “Do you and your pals want a part in cornering the guy?”

  “When and where?”

  Mercury slid into the fourth chair at the table, looking a bit rushed. Dude, you need to make some arrangements right now. The kidnappers are talking about sending the kid’s body parts to you every hour. Oh, and there are people hunting Blackson. But I don’t think you get why you need to save him. You need someone inside Koven’s camp. He’s your last hope.

  I said, But can I trust him?

  Carlos looked like a kid in a candy store when we traded the Tesla for something with longer range. I chose the Audi R8. The ice-cold gangster almost giggled when I handed him the keys and told him to drive. We crossed the river into Virginia on I-495.

  Our last stop for the evening was Rip Blackson’s house. A fine-looking woman with a child clinging to her dress answered the door. We exchanged pleasantries.

  “He came home but left again.” She put a hand on her child’s head. “He says Koven’s lost his mind.”

  “Where did he go?”

  “Why do you want to know?” She squinted at me.

  “Either he’s smart and running to hide somewhere, or he’s dumb and doing Koven’s bidding.”

  “Don’t matter,” she said. “Koven sees him as a deserter anyway.”

  “Go somewhere, like your mother’s or something.” I tried to sound cheerful, but a line like that sounds ominous no matter how you say it.

  “Why should I hide? I’m no threat to anybody.” She closed the door. “Leave us alone. We’re not part of this.”

  When I got back in the car, Carlos stared at me a long time. “What makes you think the guy’s in danger?”

  Ignoring his question, I pointed at the road.