“Is that so?”
“Oh, yeah. Hundreds of ships were sunk around the Cayman Islands. What do you think? We got Cuba as a neighbor, and Cuba used to be the last stop for ships setting out for the Spanish Main.”
“The conquistadors lost some ships here, then.”
“You better believe it. Five hundred years ago, the conquistadors like that fellow—what’s his name, Cortés?—were sailing from the Gulf of Mexico to Europe, carrying shiploads of Aztec plunder. Back in the ’70s, a young American couple from Georgia found bars of silver, gold, platinum; emeralds and diamonds; rings, bracelets, elaborate crosses. Pulled up a few hundred pounds of treasure. These were amateur divers, mind you. They weren’t looking for nothing but fun.”
“That’s incredible,” I said, stuffing my hands in my pockets.
“That’s not the half of it,” the old man said. “Turns out, the ship that wrecked was the Santiago. It had been missing since 1522. They found a coat of arms on a colossal ring, and guess whose name was on it?”
“Whose?”
“The frigging Ponce de León family. You’ve heard of him, right? Juan Ponce de León?”
“Sure, the Spaniard who discovered Florida.”
“Right. While looking for the Fountain of Youth, they say.” He paused, regained his train of thought. “Well, the captain of the Santiago was his brother Rodrigo. Turns out, Rodrigo had accompanied Cortés to Mexico, and his ship was lost right here off Grand Cayman.”
“Amazing.”
“I’ll say. There’s hasn’t been another find like that, at least not that I know of. But divers find pieces all the time, sell them to this dealer out near Rum Point.”
“Is that so?”
“That’s where I sell what I find. Mine have no value except for the gold, but Barney, he gives me a good price because I’m out there all the time. He has some magnificent pieces discovered by professional divers.”
My hand closed around the heavy pendant in my right pants pocket. “Diamonds?” I said.
“Oh, sure.”
“Might you recognize a piece if I showed you one?”
He turned away from the ocean and shielded his eyes. “If I’ve seen it before, I’ll probably recognize it.”
I pulled out the diamond pendant I’d found in the base of Olivia’s ceiling fan and held it out in my palm.
The old-timer tried to whistle but it didn’t go too well. “Oh, yeah. That’s a beauty. That monster was sitting in Barney’s store for at least fifteen, twenty years. Only recently I saw it wasn’t there no more.” He looked up at me, a bit suspicious. “Hey, if you don’t mind my asking, how did you get ahold of it?”
“It’s owned now by a young girl named Olivia back in the States. I’m trying to find out who bought it for her.”
“She won’t tell you?”
“She’s not around anymore.”
“Oh, okay. Well, Barney, he’d be able to tell you who bought it.”
I placed the pendant back in my pocket. The old man gave me the name of the store, described it in detail, and I reached into my wallet and handed him a couple hundred dollars.
“Oh, you don’t have to do that,” he said. “That’s too much. I only need about half this to eat good for a month.”
He tried to hand some back to me but I waved him off.
“It’s all right,” I said. “Spend whatever’s left on rum.”
Chapter 22
Rather than continuing on to the Ritz-Carlton, I returned to the Grand Cayman Beach Suites, took a shower to rinse away the sand and sweat, then dressed and headed across the street to the lot where I’d parked the Jeep Wrangler.
It was a winding twenty-five-mile trek from George Town to Rum Point, one of the most remote parts of the island. The point itself was known for its secluded white-sand beach and superb snorkeling. Casuarina trees towered overhead, providing badly needed shade and trunks nifty for hanging hammocks. The trade winds here at Rum Point offered some further relief from the broiling Caribbean sun, yet it remained tempting to bolt through the grass and into the calm green shallows.
Another temptation was the aroma of burgers sizzling on the grill at the Wreck Bar and Grill. Back at Hemingways, Chuck had denied my request for a ham and cheese sandwich, so I was starving. I stopped by the Wreck Bar and ordered a burger and a Coke.
While I sat eating at one of the picnic benches, I glanced at the parking lot and spotted a muddied beige Ford Explorer parked a few spaces away from my Jeep. The driver remained at the wheel, and the engine continued running. The driver’s face was covered by a copy of this morning’s Caymanian Compass.
I made a mental note of the license plate and finished my burger.
As I stood to toss out my trash, a second man jumped into the passenger side of the Explorer, and the SUV backed out of the space, turned the wheel, and peeled out of the parking lot, spinning a few heads.
I walked past the Wreck Bar and gift shops and made for the small stone building that housed the Cayman Grande Boutique. The jewelry shop looked just as the old man on Seven Mile Beach had described it, right down to the display of black coral jewelry in the front window.
A bell rang above my head as I entered.
A tall red-faced heavyset man who looked to be in his mid-sixties stood up with a scowl rather than a smile on his face. “How can I help you?” he said in a tone that sounded as though help would be the last thing he offered me.
“I’m looking for Barney,” I said, knowing from the old vagrant’s description that this was Barney.
“Yeah? Well, I’m Barney. Who are you?”
“My name’s Patrick Bateman. I have a rare piece that was purchased here a couple months back.”
“I can’t reveal the names of my customers,” he said.
I stopped just shy of the counter. “I didn’t ask you to.”
“Well, then what do you want from me?”
“I just want to confirm that it was your piece.”
“Tell you the truth, I wouldn’t recognize it if it was, so you’re wasting your time.”
“I think you might recognize this piece,” I said. “It’s pretty unique.”
He shook his head. “No, sir.”
“Don’t you want to at least take a look at it?”
“Not particularly.”
Barney was staring out his window over my shoulder, and I got the feeling I knew where the passenger of the beige Ford Explorer had been while the driver was reading his paper.
I removed the pendant from my pocket and held it up to let the light hit it. It was a serious piece and it was tough to look away from, even for Barney, who’d probably seen it every day for ten or fifteen years and now wanted nothing to do with it.
“I’ve never seen that piece before.”
“No?” I shrugged. “All right, then. Would you consider buying it?”
Barney shook his head again. “No, sir. Not interested in the least.”
I made a show of looking around the store. There were literally a dozen or more signs hanging on every wall, every showcase, reading:
WE BUY ALL JEWELRY—GOLD, SILVER, DIAMONDS.
“Who did you sell this diamond to two months ago, Barney? Just give me a name and I’ll leave. You’ll never hear from me again, and I’ll never tell anyone where I received the information.”
“I’m going to have to ask you to leave,” he said.
I took a step forward. “Not before you give me a name.”
“Leave now, or I am going to call the police and have you physically thrown from the premises.”
“Call the police,” I said. “They may want to ask you some of the same questions I’m asking you.”
“I mean it, mister.”
“I mean it too, Barney.”
He saw something in my eyes then that told him I wasn’t going away easily. He took a step back from the counter, said, “Okay, okay. Let me just check my receipts.”
He knelt below the register.
When he stood up, he was holding a .357, pointing it directly at my face.
I didn’t flinch. “Who threatened you, Barney?”
“Mr. Fisk, I’m going to give you to the count of five to get out of this store and off my property, or I am going to blow a hole in your face so wide that from the neck up you’ll look like a stick figure.”
“How do you know my name, Barney?”
“What’s that? You told it to me when you walked in here.”
“No, Barney, I didn’t. I told you my name was Patrick Bateman. You just called me Mr. Fisk.”
“Well, then you’re a damn liar, aren’t you? And if you don’t get the hell out of my store right now, you’re going to be a dead damn liar.”
Barney cocked the hammer. Probably an unnecessary step for the weapon he was pointing at me, but it brought the point home. This .357 wasn’t for show. Old Barney here wouldn’t hesitate to use it if I persisted.
I squeezed the diamond pendant in my palm, turned, and walked out of the store.
Felt as though it were twenty degrees hotter outside than it was when I went in.
Chapter 23
As the saying goes: Give a man a gun and he can rob a bank. Give a man a bank and he can rob the world.
The Cayman Islands are the fifth-largest banking center on the planet. Why? For starters, the Cayman Islands levy no taxes on profits, capital gains, or income on foreign investors. In other words, the Cayman Islands are a tax shelter. Secondly, bankers in the Cayman Islands know how to keep secrets.
Aren’t offshore financial centers that shelter multinational corporations from paying their fair share in taxes harmful to the global marketplace? you may ask. Not according to the International Monetary Fund. The IMF has deemed the system of banking “regulation” in the Cayman Islands “effective” and noted that “the overall compliance culture within Cayman is very strong, including the compliance culture related to AML (anti-money laundering) obligations.”
Difficult to comprehend? Suffice it to say that the International Monetary Fund is full of shit.
But I wasn’t in Grand Cayman to protest its banking policies. I was here to find a teenage girl who’d been stolen from her home in California. A girl whose life now hung in the balance.
Finding Olivia meant finding her kidnappers. And one way to find Olivia’s kidnappers was to find the eight and a half million dollars Edgar Trenton had wired to the Cayman Islands in order to get his daughter back.
The bank Edgar wired the money to was called I & E, and it was located in George Town, across the street from the terminals where cruise ship passengers were let off. I parked the Jeep Wrangler on the street and headed toward the bank, thinking this may well be my most futile effort in any case to date.
If I couldn’t get Barney and a young waiter at Hemingways to talk, I sure as hell wasn’t going to have any success with a Cayman banker.
When I entered the bank, I was told to have a seat. For thirty minutes, no one came near me, no one so much as looked in my direction. It was as though I was a leper. When I was finally brought to a desk, I informed the gentleman of the situation, gave him everything but my real name. He barely masked a smirk before asking me to leave.
As I made for the door, one of the young tellers was calling it a day and she stepped outside just in front of me. She had short, mousy brown hair, and compared to the rest of the Caymanian bankers, she was severely underdressed. When we both rounded the corner, she turned and smiled at me.
“You were asking about the missing girl,” she said quietly through her teeth.
I nodded.
“I can’t be seen speaking to you,” she said. “Do you know where the Grand Old House is?”
“The restaurant? I just passed it, I believe.”
“Park there. Then walk over to Smith Cove.”
“Smith Cove?”
“It’s a tiny, rocky beach surrounded by trees. You can’t miss it. Meet me there in ten minutes. If anyone sees you there, leave.”
She hurried off down the street before I had a chance to thank her.
As instructed, I parked the Jeep at the Grand Old House, which seemed to be hosting a rather lavish wedding. I kept my head down and walked in the direction of Smith Cove, which my GPS said was just a few hundred yards farther south.
Smith Cove looked straight out of a Nicholas Sparks movie. Gin-clear water lapped onto a small stretch of sand, fine white powder that felt like cotton under my bare feet. I sat on the edge of a rock, sweat causing my white Tommy Bahama shirt to stick to my back. Above my head were multicolored leaves, hanging from an old and beautiful tree. To complete the scene, the sun was just beginning to set, throwing a pink-orange hue over the placid Caribbean Sea.
For a few moments, I sat there thinking of Ana. Was it even possible for Smith Cove and Warsaw to exist on the same planet?
“Mr. Bateman?”
I turned and saw the young woman from the bank staring down at me. “Actually, my name’s Simon. Simon Fisk.”
“Louise Dietz. Don’t come up, I’ll step down.” Louise sat on the rock next to me, both our feet dangling. She spoke before I could. “I was at the bank when the first of the wire transfers came in.”
“Were they expected?” I said.
“I don’t think so. It certainly didn’t seem so. As soon as they started, my supervisor hurried me and another teller out the door.”
“Do you know whose accounts the money went into?”
“I don’t. But from what I overheard, the money wasn’t remaining at our bank. It was just passing through, moving to Zurich within minutes.”
“Zurich, huh? No surprise there.”
“I wish I could help you more, I really do. Problem is, I have zero security clearance at I and E. It’s just that you seemed desperate and I wanted to at least confirm that the money made it here.”
“I am desperate,” I said. “And I appreciate your effort.”
“What do you have in the envelope?” she said. “Pictures of the girl?”
“And others.”
“Can I see?”
“Of course.”
I removed the photos, which had been roughly handled over the past twenty-four hours. Each picture was now marred by creases and fingerprints.
“Do you recognize her?” I said.
Louise shook her head. “Just from TV.”
“How about any of the other girls?”
“No.” She flipped to the first photograph taken at the nightclub. “This is the Next Level,” she said.
“Yes.”
She reached the photos with the boys, said, “Him I know.”
I looked over her shoulder. Louise was pointing to the blond-haired, blue-eyed guy, the one I thought could be from California.
“He’s a local?” I said.
“Yeah. Well, kind of.”
“Kind of?”
“His name’s Kellen. He lives on the island part-time.”
“You know him from the bank?”
“I know his father from the bank. They’re originally from the U.S., but now they live in Costa Rica. His father works for a big land developer out there.”
“Well, that’s a start. Do you know his last name?”
“I don’t remember it. It’s something simple, but I can’t wrap my mind around it.”
“So, Kellen comes to the bank with his father?”
“Just once. But I’ve hung out with him. I went on a couple dates with his roommate.”
“His roommate? So you know where Kellen lives?”
“I’ve never been to their place. But I know it’s an apartment in George Town. That’s where Kellen stays when he’s on-island. Otherwise, he’s in Costa Rica.”
“So, Kellen has just the one roommate?”
“Yeah.”
“What’s his name?”
“Jonathan.”
“Know where I can find him?”
“Sure,” she said. “He works as a doorman at the Ritz-Carlton.
”
“No kidding,” I said. “Goes by the name Jon?”
“Yeah, everyone calls him Jon but me.”
I’d told Jon it was a small island. And for him, it had just gotten a whole hell of a lot smaller.
Chapter 24
I’d memorized Jon Krusas’s address from his employment file after I interviewed him. He’d started his shift at the Ritz-Carlton early this morning. It was now getting dark, so I wanted to try him at home. That way, if Kellen was on the island, I’d likely catch them both off-guard—and hopefully get some answers before it was too late. Before the trail went cold.
The apartment building was unimpressive, looked very much like a dormitory you’d find at any midsize American college. Which meant that security probably wouldn’t be much of a problem for me.
The building seemed to hold at least a few dozen apartments, so I waited patiently for someone to exit, rather than buzzing intercoms haphazardly. Jon Krusas and his part-time roommate, Kellen, lived on the third floor. Apartment 3E.
A young couple started their way up the path toward the building. They were both carrying multiple grocery bags. When they reached the entrance, the male fumbled for his keys. Given the aloofness of nearly every Caymanian I’d met, I didn’t want to appear too helpful and friendly, lest I seem out of place. So I let him struggle.
When he got the door open, I held it for him. Not a word of thanks. If I weren’t breaking in, I’d have been offended.
I took a hot, smelly stairwell up to the third floor, avoiding the elevators. As I approached apartment 3E, I heard the theme music to Friends. I took a chance with the knob and it turned in my hand.
“Hello, Jon,” I said, closing the door behind me. “Hope you don’t mind my dropping in, but I thought we might continue our talk.”
Krusas was standing in front of an ironing board in his underwear. Tightie-whities and a wife-beater. Not a good look for anyone, but particularly unpleasant on him.
He looked up, lifted the iron off his shirt, and considered the cord, which led to an electrical socket in the small kitchen, no doubt gauging the hot iron’s use as a weapon.
“Won’t be effective,” I told him. “You might singe one of my forearms, but you won’t accomplish anything except making me mad, and you don’t want to do that.” I pointed to the ironing board. “Set the iron down and take several steps to your left, slowly.”
Payoff Page 9
