Widows-in-Law

by Michele W. Miller

  More mysterious cursor clicks, and the document closed, then opened again.

  In the light cast by the computer screen, Emily curled her hair on her finger the same way Lauren did when anxious.

  Emily started to speak, “Jess—”

  “Shhh,” Jessica whispered, “Did you hear that?”

  “I didn’t hear anything.”

  “Someone walking in the hallway, maybe the cleaning lady. Just tell him to hurry.”

  “Tabu, hurry, we have to get out of here.” Before he could have answered, Emily’s face transformed with glee. She nearly bounced out of her chair. “We’re in.”

  ***

  In a ten-room house in Suffolk County, its living room overlooking a dock on Long Island Sound, Steve Cohen received a call. Anger infused the nerves in his face, his jaw clenching and his face growing darker. He clicked off the phone and turned to Nicole, dressed in a silk camisole she wore like a Brooks Brothers suit. Her opal-painted toes matched the carpet. His eyes lingered on them for a moment.

  Nicole searched his face, her own expression hard and down to business. “What’s going on?”

  He loosened his tie and consciously relaxed his face. “Nada.”

  She ran her hand through her short hair. “Bullshit.”

  “Office business … do you want to pick the color of the toilet paper now?”

  “You can be such an ass sometimes.” She turned to leave.

  He watched her shapely legs, her walk powered with adrenaline even when she walked slowly. Steve pondered Nicole’s legs, comparing her to his recollection of the gorgeous women at Home Game, so different from Nicole but no hotter. His mind returned to his last night out with Brian when Brian showed him around the seedy-chic casino upstairs, enticingly shady and exclusive like a Bernie Madoff investment fund. The tiny manager knew Brian and seated them in the VIP lounge where Steve and Brian could watch the poker players. High-class hookers rubbed the necks of the players. One whispered in a player’s ear, her Stormy Daniels breasts brushing his shoulder.

  Steve took a sip of his Stoli and put it aside. “I’m glad we have a chance to talk outside the office.”

  Brian tore his eyes away from the hookers. “Oh, yeah?”

  “The congressman called.”

  “Needs money?”

  Steve ignored the snark. For a lowlife, Brian could really get on a high horse. “They always need money. But it wasn’t about that. He was concerned.” Steve leaned toward Brian. “I’m concerned. He said you were talking down the Etta Houses settlement to our clients.”

  “Oh, that,” Brian crossed his legs, relaxed, always self-assured when they talked about cases. “The offer sucks. It’s not even close.”

  “He’s worried you’re raising their expectations. He wants the case settled. He has a lot of people to take care of there. Until they get a settlement, he has to figure out how to take care of them with taxpayer money. He wants the case out of his hair.”

  Brian leaned over, his eyes on fire. “Frankly, Steve, I don’t give a fuck. Your congressman is not our client. Our clients need to be taken care of for the rest of their lives, eighty years or better for the kids, with trust funds that ensure they’re protected if their brains are too lead-fried to make sound decisions for themselves. They need education, job training, therapy, medication, and a yearly income. Anything less than that, and I’m not letting it happen.”

  “They’re going to live sad little lives no matter how much money we give them.” Steve raised his index finger for emphasis, “I will not keep paying for discovery forever. The congressman wants this settled, and I’m in his corner on this. Get with the program, Brian.”

  “I’m not sure I can do that, Steve.”

  “I want you to think long and hard about that.” Steve stood, furious, more because he still needed Brian than anything else. “I’m going to play some fucking poker.”

  He sat down at an empty chair at one of the poker tables, whispering to the busty hooker to get him some coke. As the dealer dealt him in, Steve glanced over at Brian sitting in the VIP lounge, smirking, as if he were above a night of sex, drugs, and poker. Meeting Steve’s eyes, Brian raised his drink in a gesture of a friendly toast, although it felt as friendly as a woman must feel when she toasts with a guy who’s roofied her. It ended up being an expensive night filled with lousy coke and lousier poker hands, lasting long after Brian left to go home.

  Steve’s mind returned to the phone call he’d just received. Halfway up the floating stairs that curved to their bedroom, Nicole turned back, sneering down at him, “And Steve, if the color of the firm’s toilet paper affects me in any way whatsoever, I will pick it.”

  The door closed behind her.

  His face hard again, Steve thumbed into his cell phone and found the contact he wanted. He listened to it ring, “Not this time, Nicole.”

  ***

  Emily and Jessica watched Brian’s computer screen fill with a chart of what looked like company names with numbers and other words in columns next to them. “What is it?” Emily asked.

  Some of the names gave no clue about the nature of their businesses: Jansen-White, Inc., Samson Holding Co. But some were not so subtle.

  “Look at that one.” Jessica pointed toward the middle of the screen. “‘Secured Boxes, Inc.’ They’re probably all private safety-deposit box companies. We should figure out which ones are in Miami. Brian must have stashed the money in a safe-deposit box.”

  “Would they let us in?”

  “I don’t know. The last column could be passwords. They’re all gibberish words. Maybe all you need is the box number, password, maybe a key?”

  Emily said goodbye to Tabu. “I’ll throw it away. Someplace safe,” she promised him and put the phone in her backpack. She clicked on the print icon and the printer hummed. She exited the file and put the thumb drive in her backpack, too. “I guess that’s the catch, huh?”

  “What?”

  “The key.”

  “Yeah. But we’ve gotten this far.” Jessica bent down and began to search furiously in the lower desk drawers she hadn’t looked through yet, even though, logically, the key to the safe-deposit box would have been with Brian, probably burnt and lost after the fire. Jessica closed the drawer and straightened up. “We can call the Miami police and see if they have any of Brian’s property. We never got his watch or wallet back either. It’s only natural we’d call.”

  Jessica heard a strange noise again. Jessica couldn’t tell whether it was from the hallway or the street outside. “What is that?”

  Emily opened her mouth to say something but a crash sounded from the door. A flood of light bleached her features. Jessica and Emily yelped in unison. Jessica grabbed Emily and turned toward the door, putting her body in front of Emily’s. A group of silhouetted figures stormed in, guns trained on them. The overheads flared on.

  A man shouted. “Put your hands up, move away from the desk. You’re under arrest.”

  CHAPTER 26

  Blackout blinds kept prying eyes out of the casino above Home Game sports bar.

  Carl paused at the podium inside the entrance and Daisy gave him a cheek-to-cheek kiss. “Carlito.” Her voice was raspy.

  “How’s the baby?” he asked, looking past her, scanning the room. A sprinkling of men sat at the roulette tables; a couple more played blackjack; an off-duty call girl played the slot machines that were grouped in a corner. A table of marks and cons played poker.

  Daisy smiled at the mention of her son. “Fine, thank you.”

  “I’ve got something for you,” CB approached as Carl walked inside. He pulled Carl toward an empty blackjack table. CB wore a sharp navy suit shot through with iridescent highlights that glowed in the dim room. “Lucho Arena, I told you about him—Jorge’s enforcer—he showed up before I opened. He went into my office bathroom with a paper ba
g and changed clothes.”

  Carl had done his research on Lucho Arena. Lucho was a mean bastard, liked being the muscle even though he was close enough to the center of power to let someone else do the dirty work. He’d been suspected of several murders back in the ’90s when he was still in the drug game. Carl had seen the gruesome photos. They’d never been able to get enough evidence to charge him.

  “Changed clothes?” Carl asked.

  “Definitely. Same color pants but a different shirt and even a different jacket. He must have been coming from work, you could say. Word is that a guy was killed in Chinatown. I’d lay odds he was Lucho’s vic.”

  “Did Lucho say anything?”

  “He doesn’t say much. But I heard him on the phone. Jorge’s in some deep shit with the Chinese about the missing money. Their meeting didn’t go well. In war, the best defense is a strong offense. But you gotta wonder what’s up with that money that would make Arena and Lucho so hyped. Jorge’s on his fucking period about it.”

  “The missing money?” Carl played it cool. “What more could be going on?”

  “The possibilities are endless when it comes to Jorge sending money to a Chinese billionaire. Have you really looked into the Chinese dude?”

  Carl took CB’s question as rhetorical but wouldn’t have answered it anyway. Xi Wen ran several businesses in China. Medical supplies, munitions factories, cell phone parts, and housing developments in the newly-born Chinese cities that had sprouted up around Chinese industries. Carl did wonder why Arena was so desperate to send him money, or at least why it was such a time-sensitive matter to settle up a gambling debt.

  “So who got hit?” Carl didn’t trust CB but he was starting to think the ASAC had done right to recruit him. CB had a knack for getting information. He was very motivated to cooperate. A pretty boy like him—weighing no more than 120 pounds—would have a tough time in jail.

  “I heard the dead guy was from a Chinatown Tong that works for Xi Wen. I’m thinking they made the mistake of threatening Jorge.” CB lowered his voice, “Did you know Jorge’s father was in Trujillo’s death squads in the DR? Jorge is literally a natural-born killer. It doesn’t take much to get him started down a very dark path.”

  “Your family history makes his look like Mother Teresa’s.”

  CB grimaced. “Leave my family out of this. We’re three generations removed from any fake news you’ve heard.”

  Carl and CB walked back downstairs, passing the players who were focused on their cards, roulette balls, and shoulder rubs. At the bathroom adjacent to CB’s office, Carl signaled him to stay back and used a handkerchief to turn the doorknob. He looked in at the pristine granite sink and marble floors without touching anything. He glanced inside an empty wastebasket. He returned to CB’s office and called on his cell to see if the FBI computer showed any police activity in Chinatown. An agent confirmed a street murder. Carl spoke into the phone, “We’ll need a forensics crew here with a truck and the cable repair get-up.” Carl turned back to CB. “You did well. You’ll need to stay out of there until the morning when the crew can come in without calling attention to itself. Can you use another bathroom?”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  Carl and CB headed back upstairs to the casino, which had started to fill up while they were downstairs. At a couch in the back, a group of men were giving drink orders to Daisy.

  “That’s Jorge and his cousin, Pedro,” CB said, a slight jitteriness betraying CB’s nerves at cooperating with the FBI now that he was physically face-to-face with Jorge Arena. “Let’s get this over with.”

  Jorge Arena was a large man in his fifties. Weather lines furrowed his face, softening pockmarks left from teenage acne. Carl thought his decades of illicit power had given him a commanding aura. Pedro was a big man, too, probably in his late forties. They both wore suits.

  “Jorge, this is Carl,” CB said in Spanish. “He’s helping me out here.”

  Jorge nodded hello, not offering a seat.

  “If you need anything,” Carl said to Jorge, “just let me know.” Carl signaled to Daisy to come over. “The next round’s on me.”

  “Gracias,” Jorge said. “And how do you know CB?”

  “We went to City College together,” Carl replied. “When we ran into each other again, we were both in the same type of business.”

  “Which is?”

  “I work in clubs, but more than anything, I agent gamblers, book bets.”

  Jorge raised his eyebrows. “Quite a coincidence.”

  “Yeah, small world,” CB cut in.

  “If you’ll excuse me,” Carl said, having accomplished all he could on the first meet and greet.

  ***

  An hour later, Carl met up with Rick and they drove downtown on West Street. Carl filled Rick in on what CB had said. “CB made a good point. This whole thing about the missing money doesn’t sit right. Why wouldn’t Arena try to tell Xi Wen to eat the loss? The money getting lost in transit must be a normal risk of doing business under the table. Like the cost of shoplifting for a department store.”

  “Millions of dollars?” Rick said. “Even a billionaire would want his money.”

  “True, but why would Arena be in such a rush to pay the money? You would think Arena could negotiate a discounted sum and that it would benefit him to take his time. It isn’t like Xi Wen is going on food stamps if he has to wait.”

  Rick signaled, changing lanes to pass a slow car. “Lucho’s Chinatown hit could be part of the negotiations. A shot across the bow.”

  “Jorge and Lucho have been busy today. This morning Jordan Connors was killed, tonight someone else. I think we’re onto something bigger than we thought. There’s a missing piece here. We know Arena infiltrated Jordan’s website. What if Arena’s guy had a look at the poker cards, intentionally lost a bet, and was really making a payment to Xi Wen, maybe buying something?”

  “It’s an interesting theory,” Rick said.

  Carl reached into his jacket for his phone and called into headquarters to see if the stingray had picked up any conversations at the bar when Lucho was there. An agent answered. After a few moments of narrowing down to the time Carl requested, she played back a call.

  Carl recognized Lucho’s voice, words edged with a slimy sexuality as he spoke to a woman. “Hecho.”

  A woman’s voice: “Bueno.”

  “La viuda?” Lucho asked.

  The Spanish word for “widow” froze Carl’s lungs. It was the second time a question about the wife or widow had come up on audio. After the news they’d received from Westchester earlier in the day and the way Lauren had acted, what were the odds of it being unrelated to Silverman’s widow or even Lauren?

  The woman responded, “Still no call since you went.”

  Carl hung up and spoke to Rick. “Jordan’s good friend, Brian Silverman, vacationed in Tortola for one day with twelve million dollars and ended up dead; this morning in Westchester, someone called in a report of a possible carjacking at a strip mall. The perpetrator matches Jordan Connors’ general description and the car was at least similar to Silverman’s car, which is of course now driven by his wife. The caller was pretty sure of what she saw, but no one has reported her missing. What if Silverman was duped into thinking he was transporting a gambling debt but it was really something more dangerous and now—”

  “You’re jumping from one unproven assumption to another,” Rick interrupted. “Jordan’s body was found in a completely different county. We have a beige car, no usable description of the possible carjacker, and no victim. Just our luck there were no cameras outside the mall. What you’ve got, my man, is too little to get a tap on the widow or a warrant to look at her car. We are homing in on something big, and your mind is stuck on a tangent.”

  “I’d place a bet on it.”

  “You’ve been hanging out with too many gamblers.
We’ll find out more when we start getting forensics reports back on Jordan.”

  Carl’s mind returned to the prospect of Lauren being caught up with Arena and the murderous crew who surrounded him, now adding in the Chinese Tong. “Listen, Rick, I know you want me to let it go, but Lauren Davis works out at our gym, for God’s sake. Lucho was talking about la viuda, the widow. Jordan, too. Who were they talking about? Who was it Lucho visited? Lucho is a killer and he didn’t seem too pleased. I get the impression that Jorge Arena isn’t too pleased either.”

  “All you really have evidence of is that Brian Silverman knew Jordan and that Silverman went to great lengths—all the way to the Caribbean—to get laid. And now Jordan Connors is dead, so he won’t be telling us anything different.”

  “We could bring Lauren Davis in, see if she knows anything. She’d cooperate. She’s an attorney and a prosecutor.”

  “Tony Soprano’s girl? Once a Mob chick, always … well, you know. Anyway, she’s a Family Court prosecutor, not an ADA. She’s not law enforcement. You have nothing on her—less than on the widow. I don’t even know why you’re hyped about her.”

  “Because I’ve got an instinct about this.”

  “No, you’ve got the hots for that girl.”

  Carl laughed. “That’s total bullshit.”

  “Boy, I saw the way you looked at her at the gym. You need to watch your ass—and mine. If you screw up, they’ll be looking at me like, Why didn’t you stop him? Well, I’ve now officially suggested that you’re a sick motherfucker in need of some serious therapy or some meaningless sex, one or the other.”

  “Thanks, bro. But it’s Arena who needs some serious therapy. I think he’s going off the rails. Even though I have to say he seemed cool as the Arctic when I met him.”

  They drove past the Meatpacking District, partyers crowding the cobbled streets. Despite himself, Carl thought about Lauren—laughing with her, holding her for just a moment. There was something special about her, but his encounter with her tonight confirmed that something wasn’t right. Rick would have gone ballistic about Carl unofficially staking her out, so Carl couldn’t mention how scared she’d seemed, how her hand had trembled when he held it.