by Dan O'Shea
“You have your sample?” the man asked.
“Nice to meet you, too,” said Hardin.
The man smiled briefly, but not like he meant it. “The sample,” he repeated.
Hardin pulled the small canvas bag from his pants pocket, the same one he’d given Stein. Lafitpour held it out a little to his side and shook it, still some dirt on it, then held it up at shoulder level. The larger man came, took the bag, and left the restaurant.
Hardin had another bite of the pizza. The man sat across from him, hands folded on the table, looking him directly in the eyes. He didn’t seem to blink much.
“I can’t decide,” Hardin said. “The pizza any good here? Been a while since I had any.”
The man smiled again, said nothing. His phone rang. The man held it to his head, listened for a moment, ended the call, put the phone away. He pulled a business card from his pocket, and slid it across the table to Hardin.
“Your sample checks out. Be at this address the day after tomorrow at 8pm.Have your account information and the rest of the material with you. You can bring the pistol you are wearing on your left side under the jacket if it makes you feel any better.”
“Thanks,” said Hardin. “It does. I will. Do I get my sample back?”
The man smiled again, got up, and left.
“I guess not,” Hardin said to the empty chair.
CHAPTER28
Hardin drove back to the Motel 6, walked into his room, and saw a woman sitting in the desk chair, the chair turned toward the door. Late thirties maybe, medium height, lean, dark hair cut short, gray slacks, white blouse, blue blazer, black S&W.40. Not pointed at him, not exactly. It took a second.
“Hello, Juanita,” Hardin said.
She smiled. “Hello, Mike. Or should I say Nick? I like Nick, actually. Suits you. Mike always seemed a little pedestrian for you. And I’m Jeanette, by the way.” She picked a leather badge case from her blazer pocket and tossed it to him. Hardin flipped it open.
“Agent Wilson. Nice to meet you.”
“We’ll see, Nick. We’ll see.”
Hardin stood, Wilson sat, some kind of charge building between them.
“I guess the time was never right,” she said. He didn’t have to think about what that meant. “I’ll be here when the time is right” – those were her last words to him, all those years ago.
Hardin didn’t know what to say. “After Esteban, I just, I don’t know. I didn’t feel like I had the right.”
She nodded. “I wish… I guess I wish a lot of things.”
They looked at each other for a long time. She was leaner than she had been, harder. The long black hair he’d loved was cut back to a few practical inches. Hardin tried to see what he used to in her eyes, but there was nothing to read.
“I was thinking about looking you up,” Hardin said finally.
“If you had looked for Juanita Sandoval, I would have been a little hard to find.”
Hardin closed the badge case and flipped it back to her. “I guess,” he said. “DEA, huh? Is Hernandez in this already?”
She nodded. “Your prints turned up at a crime scene and word got around. That and you were on Oprah. You stick a pen in some guy’s neck yesterday?”
“That depends.”
“On what?”
“On who’s asking. If it’s Agent Wilson, then I guess I need a lawyer.”
She set the badge and the gun down on the desk next to the chair. “It’s just me.”
“OK, yeah. The guy was fixing to shoot me at the time, though.”
“Well, you got a lot of people looking for you.”
“I was hoping I might be kind of hard to find, too.”
Wilson gave a little snort. “Took me about six hours. Of course, I had an idea of where to start looking. But how long before someone else is showing the kid down at the desk your picture? And you’d better hope that someone is just a cop, not one of Hernandez’s people. And not one of Corsco’s people.”
“Guess I’ll just have to keep moving,” Hardin said.
“How long do you need?”
“A day, maybe two.”
Her face went still for a moment, her mouth half-open like she had something to say but had to weigh the words first.
“So my place. No one will be looking for you there.”
The statement hung between them a long moment. Hardin shook his head.
“There’s no way I’m putting you in the middle of this. I can make it through tomorrow. If you want to do me a favor, then just walk away. If you can’t do that, then take me in. I’ll go. There’s no way I’m hurting you. Not again.”
A hard smile from Wilson, her hand moving from the armrest of the chair to the desk next to the S&W. “Hurting me? You’re assuming you could.”
She sat, he stood, each of them looking at the other, neither of them knowing what to say next.
“I used to think what it would be like,” he said, “seeing you again. This isn’t what I expected.”
“You were thinking a husband, a couple of kids?”
“Something like that.”
“Tried the husband thing,” she said. “Didn’t work out.”
“Why not?”
She locked her eyes on his, held his gaze. “Because I kissed this guy goodbye at an airport a long time ago. The goodbye part didn’t take.” She stopped for a moment, their eyes still locked. “I’ve thought about seeing you again, too,” she continued. “I’ve thought about that a lot. I’ve thought about how every good moment in my life falls on the other side of the day you got on that plane. And I lived with that because there was no way not to.” She stopped again, then said, “This isn’t just your decision.”
Hardin felt something turning in his gut, wondered if it could really be like this. She’d been a kid, he’d barely been more than that, and all of it was most of a lifetime ago. Her picture in his wallet all these years, that had been a talisman, a fantasy. And now here she was, and she was no one that he remembered. He thought of some of the things he’d done, what doing those things had made him. And yet for a moment the years were gone. She got up from her chair, took a step toward him, he took one toward her. He went to put his arms around her, but she reached up, put her right hand flat against his chest, her eyes finally leaving his, looking down.
“I’m not who I was,” her voice cracking just a little.
He pulled her hand from his chest and held it to his mouth, kissed her palm. He felt her shiver. He lifted her chin until their eyes locked again.
“Who is?” he said.
CHAPTER 29
Lynch was at the UC with Reagan, watched the last couple players skate off the ice before the anthem. Lynch’d always been a baseball guy, a Wrigley guy. Besides, the Wirtz family had acted like such dicks for so long, who wanted to put any coin in their pockets?
Lynch hadn’t been to a Hawks game in years. Back when they sucked, you could get in at the old stadium cheap. But old man Wirtz finally died, the Hawks got their organizational heads out of their asses and won the Stanley Cup. Now they were a tough ticket.
Seats were halfway up the mezzanine. Reagan had some fancy-ass camera, some kind of digital SLR rig with a big zoom on it. He was pretty good with it. With newspapers cutting back everywhere, being good with a camera was one more way to keep yourself employed.
Lynch noticed a bit of a commotion up in one of the luxury boxes on the other side of the stadium. Thought somebody looked familiar.
“Hey, can I borrow the camera a second?” he asked.
Reagan handed it to him. He looked up at the booth, cranked the zoom.
Shamus Fenn. Couple other people Lynch knew, too. Davis, one of the old-line aldermen, guy that was always on the edge of every new corruption probe and somehow always ended up not being in the indictment. Couple of union big shots. Some young looker was chatting up Fenn, running her hand up his arm. Another guy was standing next to her, looking pissed – guy she’d come with, probably. Then some
body grabbed Fenn by the arm, pulled him aside. Lynch couldn’t see who it was – the looker and her date were in the way, having words. Whoever had grabbed Fenn had his back to Lynch. Shorter guy, in a suit. Whatever this was about, Fenn didn’t look happy. Finally, the suit guy turned to leave and Lynch caught his profile.
Lynch clicked the shutter, hoping it worked. Damn camera had more buttons and knobs on it than the space shuttle.
“How can I tell if I got anything?” Lynch asked.
Reagan took the camera, brought the shot up on the screen. Fenn and the suit, clear enough.
“Shamus Fenn and Gerry Ringwald,” Reagan said. He lifted the camera, squeezed off some more shots. “Jesus, Davis, some of Corsco’s union buddies. It’s like an asshole convention up there.”
“Yeah,” Lynch said.
“You get an asshole convention, somebody ends up with shit on them.”
Lynch didn’t say anything, but he was thinking about Fenn turning up in that video with this Hardin fuck, about him turning up here now with some mob lawyer, about the dead mob guys down at South Shore.
“You got an interest here?” Reagan asked.
Lynch didn’t have any kind of off-the-record deal with Reagan. “Watch the damn game,” he said.
“I bet if I looked like Johnson, you’d have an interest.”
Lynch just smiled.
CHAPTER 30
Bahram Lafitpour twirled the wine in the glass, took a deep sniff, and then shook his head at the sommelier.
“I’m afraid we’ll need another bottle,” he said. “This is a little corky.”
The sommelier kept a straight face, which impressed Munroe. He wasn’t sure which bottle Lafitpour had ordered exactly, some kind of Bordeaux, but in the quick look he’d had at the wine list, he hadn’t seen anything much under $300 a bottle, and had seen more than a few that went for four figures. Lafitpour was a four-figure kind of guy.
“It is an earthy vintage, sir. Perhaps you’d care to taste it first?”
Lafitpour looked up at the man with a thin smile that shriveled Munroe’s sack just a little. Lafitpour was still a scary bastard.
“The scent was proof enough. I don’t need to taint my palate. But if you doubt my judgment, you are free to taste it.”
The sommelier raised the glass, sniffed, took a small sip, set the glass back on the table and made a disapproving face. “You are correct, sir. Of course. A new bottle, immediately.”
Lafitpour nodded at the glass. “And a new glass.”
The sommelier took the glass and scurried off.
“Never actually seen that done before,” said Munroe. “Anybody sending the wine back.”
“The wine wasn’t spoiled, but it wasn’t the 1982 I ordered, either. Eighty-two was a banner year, which is why they can charge that ridiculous price for it. They saved a label from one of the few bottles of the ’82 they’ve actually sold and swapped it out for a bottle from an inferior year. Your average tech geek looking to impress some girl he could never hope to bed without his money will order it to show off for the lass and never know the difference. He’ll like the poorer year better anyway. Not as aggressive, a little less tannic, more suited to his pedestrian tastes. I suppose I could have just accused them of fraud, but that would have caused a scene and we would likely have been asked to leave. He now knows I know, I’ve saved him the embarrassment of calling him on his little charade, and he will bring the proper bottle.”
Munroe shook his head a little. “You haven’t changed much, Bahram.”
Lafitpour shrugged. “A little older, a little wiser.”
“And considerably richer.”
The thin smile again. “Oh, considerably.”
Munroe had first seen Lafitpour in Tehran in 1978. Lafitpour was a rising star in SAVAK, the Shah’s notorious secret police, and Munroe was an unofficial liaison trying to help the Shah stuff the Islamic revolution toothpaste back in the tube. The demonstrations and strikes had already hit critical mass, though. It was clear the Peacock Throne was circling the drain.
But Lafitpour had built an impressive string of assets throughout the country, so Munroe greased the skids on getting him out. The mullahs would end up running the joint, but Uncle Sam would still want some ears on the ground. Lafitpour had settled in Chicago and made a huge fortune in the hedge fund business, huge even by hedge fund standards. There’d been some noise about his methods, but Lafitpour was careful, and he had friends in the right places. Munroe was one of them. Given the Iranian involvement in Munroe’s current situation, Lafitpour had been one of his first calls when he hit town. Munroe asked him to keep his ears up. Not that Lafitpour had called back.
The sommelier returned with the new bottle. Lafitpour went through the necessary ritual, nodded his approval, the sommelier poured the wine and left. Munroe took a sip. He could see Lafitpour’s point on the aggressive business. Munroe was sure it was great wine, but he expected that he and the tech geek would both have been happier with a cheap Merlot.
“Your friend with the diamonds,” Lafitpour said, “this Hardin? The Russians have been in touch. He’s looking to sell and they’d like me to front the deal. They are offering $20 million, of which I will keep five. So fifteen on your friend’s end.”
“Probably better than Stein offered,” Munroe said.
“Probably.”
“When?”
“I met Hardin this afternoon to check his sample and offer terms. I assumed you would still need some time to make your arrangements, so I scheduled the exchange for the day after tomorrow at my office.”
Munroe nodded. “So we can grab Hardin then. Want to add a little wrinkle, though. Suppose you actually made the deal, this Russian money, where’s it going to look like it came from?”
Lafitpour smiled his thin smile again. “The money will have bounced through several wire transfers at dependable banks in various countries where secrecy is still taken seriously, despite the Justice Department’s recent best efforts. It will appear to have come from thin air.”
“What if I want it to look like it came from somewhere else?’
“Such as?”
“What if I wanted to make it look like it came from Jamie Hernandez?”
“The cartels?”
Munroe nodded.
Lafitpour shrugged. “They are cursed with cash. Of the curses one can have, that’s among the best, of course, but it does complicate their lives. They run so much currency through so many laundries that those of us in the financial game have a pretty good idea of who has been washing what, and where. Yes, I can make the money appear to have come from Hernandez.”
Munroe thought it through. They had the video on al Din; they’d have the diamonds; they’d have Hardin, who could either recite the right lines or his corpse could offer the mute testimony of Munroe’s choosing. It was moving faster than he would have liked. It would be nice to have al Din in the pot too, but Munroe had long since learned about birds in the hand. You have one, you give it a good squeeze, crush the son of a bitch. Hold a live bird in your hand too long, the thing will shit in your palm and fly away. This was probably as good as it was going to get.
“OK,” Munroe said. “I’ll start clipping loose ends. This will have to get official quick though. I need a public face, a behind-the-podium guy. Somebody who can wrap this whole thing up tight in a flag and make the press salute it. This is your town. Suggestions?”
“Alex Hickman. New US attorney in town.”
“He our kind of boy?”
“I have regular dealings with Mr Hickman and have contributed substantially to the political coffers he won’t admit to having as of yet. He’s proven most useful running interference when the SEC gets a little nosy. He is our kind of boy.”
“Can you set up a meet?”
“Lunch at my home tomorrow, shall we say one?”
“You don’t have to check with him?”
Lafitpour smiled. “Once a dog is sufficiently well trained, you no lon
ger have to check when you say come.” Lafitpour took another sip of the wine. “One question. If this is all going to be pitched as some drugs-funding-terrorism deal, could you arrange the snatch at a location other than my office? It would reflect poorly on my business.”
Munroe’s turn to smile. “But why, my friend? You have been working undercover in association with elements of US intelligence for months helping to set up this breakthrough in the War on Terror and the War on Drugs. You will provide the inside knowledge concerning how Al Qaeda, Iran and the cartels are cooperating in their money movement and money laundering. You are an American hero, an Iranian immigrant showing your gratitude to this great nation that is the font of your fortune. Just the sort of guy, when the shit hits the fan and we destabilize the Khamenei regime, state might look at to head over to Tehran and run the place, after the free and fair elections, of course.”
“Of course,” Lafitpour said. “I’d forgotten. But I still take my five million.”
“Fine,” said Munroe. “But you pay for dinner, I can’t afford the wine.”
In the cab back to the hotel, Munroe’s phone pinged – dossier on Tony Corsco. Thought on that a minute. If everything went according to plan, they should have Hardin in the bag within forty-eight hours. But sometimes things didn’t go according to plan. Besides, this business with Hardin and Corsco, it had to be about the diamonds, and Munroe needed to know what kind of word was floating around out there, make sure there were no stray narratives in the mix on game day. Anyway, there was no such thing as too much information or too many assets. So he’d set up a meet with this Corsco fuck. Dossier had a lawyer’s name – Ringwald. Work it through him, make it easier. Munroe figured if he gave the lawyer a sniff of his bona fides, it would grease the skids. And he’d had to lean on the mob before– that Carmelo dick out in New York – so he could play that card if he needed it.
