So when Angus offered to host the party at his Upper West-side penthouse apartment, Joe had taken him up on the offer. Angus knew what he’d gone through with Carla’s disappearance, and he’d provided a reliable background to the Bob Garrison pseudonym for the reference checks with George Spector and his group. Joe’s other close friends—Tom Spellman and Charles Glowacz—had provided air-tight references as well. He counted himself lucky to have such friends.
Booking Chef Munchel had been as simple as making the arrangement with the Chef’s business manager. Normally, Munchel had to be booked months in advance. Joe had been prepared for that. Luck was on his side, though. An opening had come up for the weekend of the 10th. Joe had reserved the spot immediately on his American Express card. Then he’d called Angus with the news, hoping his friend could pull strings at the last minute. “I’ll make the arrangements on my end,” Angus had said. “Don’t worry about it.”
And now the party had been under full swing since eight o’clock.
Angus and Joe had billed the event as a social mixer for their respective firms. Chuck Glowacz had flown in from Los Angeles. Angus had invited a couple of lower-rung stock brokers from his firm—guys who had never met Joe Taylor and were introduced to him as Bob Garrison to lend verisimilitude. In turn, Joe had invited Dean Campbell, Earl Sanders, George Spector and John Lansdale. In total, there were two dozen guests.
Joe had spent most of the time at the bar in the kitchen, talking to Jim Munchel and his kitchen staff. He drank countless manhattans. He got tipsy. Despite this, he was very aware of Angus and Dean keeping an eye on things. That’s what they were here for. Joe’s goal was to get into Munchel’s inner circle. He was already part of Lansdale’s and Spector’s. He was on the verge of knowing about their private deals, and despite Earl Sanders being somewhat distant, he was getting to know him better, too. He wanted to get closer to Munchel to learn more about Bent Creek and Wayne Sanders, which would lead him to Bill Richards.
Jim Munchel had prepared balsamic vinaigrette scallops wrapped in bacon as appetizers. Joe had devoured them, finding them very good. He’d also been partial to the escargots in lime-butter sauce and the buffalo frog-legs. When he’d booked the event he’d spent an hour with Munchel over the phone discussing the menu. Joe had picked the chef’s brain on exotic cuisine. They’d finally settled on something exotic and tantalizing: the aforementioned appetizers along with braised butterflied leg of lamb, Ostrich steaks, or Reticulated Python flanks for the meat; these dishes were served over either beds of wild rice, sautéed mushrooms and gravy made from pig stock, or broiled banana leaves. The desserts were more traditional, everything from truffles to flan, to various ice creams.
“Are you sure you want the python flanks?” Munchel had asked him. “Your guests might balk at a dish that’s so foreign to them.”
“Maybe they will,” Joe had responded. “But I certainly want to try it. And my partner Angus has been chomping at the bit to sample it the moment he saw it on your menu.”
“Ah! I see.” The menu Joe had referred to was the special menu, accessible only by username/password on Munchel’s website after the deposit had been made. It wasn’t available to the general public. Sautéed monkey brains had been on the menu, along with live Octopus (in which Octopus tentacles were prepared and served while the Octopus was still alive, braised in a sauce partially made with Octopus ink) and a similar dish utilizing live lobster. The monkey brain dish had been the first thing Joe had asked for, but Munchel reported that he wouldn’t have a good source for the ingredient until fall. He’d wanted to go with the live Octopus but was unsure if some of his guests, particularly Dean, Chuck, Tom, and Angus, would be able to stomach it. The python had been the more logical choice.
Once again, Joe dined with Spector, Sanders, and Lansdale, and maintained a chummy rapport with Munchel after dinner service. He was feeling the effects of the alcohol, too. It made him more outgoing, more agreeable to conversation. His caution and cunning remained, though; he held back just enough to retain that semblance of control so he could remember things later. Besides, he also had Dean Campbell and Angus Scott to cover his back.
When dinner and dessert was over and the mixer resumed in various portions of the spacious apartment, Joe found himself at the large center island talking food with Chef Munchel and George Spector. “That was wonderful,” Joe told Chef Munchel. “Too bad you didn’t have access to the monkey brains. I would have liked to have had that again.”
“Chef has prepared sautéed lamb’s brains and duck embryos as well,” George said. He took a sip of his drink—a martini. “Ever had those?”
“Sautéed lamb’s brains, yes,” Joe said, the lie coming across perfectly. “Duck embryos, no. Speaking of which,” he turned to George, letting his train of thought take over from his research into such exotic cuisine. “One time on a business trip here I went with some colleagues to a Korean restaurant where we had freshly vivisected lobster and live octopus. That was good!”
“I’ve had that too,” George exclaimed. “That’s Kim’s Place in Lower Manhattan, right?”
“Yes, that’s it,” Joe said.
Chef Munchel listened as he cleaned the kitchen. “You like seafood, Mr. Garrison?”
“Love it.”
“And we know you like lamb and beef from our previous dinners,” Chef Munchel continued. “What about pork?”
“That too, and that reminds me.” He turned to George Spector. “Here’s one...pig fetuses broiled in orange butter sauce. Had that in Minneapolis once.”
“That, I’ve never tried,” George admitted.
Chef Munchel was listening to all this with great interest. “I’m pleasantly surprised, Mr. Garrison. I didn’t take you for a connoisseur.”
“I never thought I would be until my work started taking me to far flung locations.” Joe took a sip of his drink. “I had business once in Kenya, in Nairobi. A few days after we concluded our business, several of us hired a travel guide who took us to this fabulous place off in Kisumu in Nyanza Province and the chef there prepared gorilla breasts grilled in mango salsa.”
“Whoa!” George looked impressed. “Now that is a dish. I’ve only had once myself. Chef Munchel prepared it.”
“Was that Silverback breasts, Mr. Garrison?” Chef Munchel asked.
“Yes, they were.”
“And where was this?”
“The Kisumu on Dunga Road. The Chef’s name was Matubi. Odd man. Nice enough, but odd.” Joe had rehearsed this the day before while on a marathon research session. He’d plucked Matubi’s name from a cached website on the internet about black market exotic foods.
“Silverback Gorilla meat is black market,” Chef Munchel said, his voice lowered as he began to wipe down the marble countertop. “It’s easy to prepare, but challenging due to its black market status. I’ve only prepared it twice. I hope you don’t ask me to procure it for you, because I’m afraid my floor price will be extremely high.”
Joe chuckled. “Don’t worry about it. I wouldn’t want you to take the risk. Besides, if I want the dish that badly, I’d compensate you generously.”
“I appreciate that, Mr. Garrison.” Munchel continued wiping down the counter.
“Well, if you decide to employ Chef Munchel’s services in preparing Silverback breasts, give me a call!” George Spector elbowed him good-naturedly and downed the rest of his drink. He got to his feet. “I think I need another drink.”
Joe raised his glass. “I’ll be here.”
As George ambled off to the bar for a refill, Chef Munchel finished with the counter. Joe nodded to him. “I know Silverback is taboo. Probably because it’s like eating Long Pig. And that’s something I’ve only heard about through an acquaintance who claimed he tried it in South America during some native ritual.”
“It was served as part of a religious ceremony?”
“So says my friend Richard.” Joe grinned. “But then he was probably stoned out of his mind durin
g the ceremony, so I’m relying on the memory of a guy whose perceptions were pretty impaired.”
“So he doesn’t remember how it tasted?”
“Not at all,” Joe replied. “And I only use the term ‘Long Pig’ because well...that’s the nickname I’ve heard for it. That it’s supposed to taste like pork.”
“Is it a dish you would try if given the opportunity, Mr. Garrison?”
Joe thought about it, putting the visual effort in giving him the impression he was seriously considering it. “Yes, I would,” he said, nodding at Chef Munchel, not breaking eye contact. “If the opportunity presented itself, I would have no problem trying it.”
Chef Munchel smiled back. “Like I said, it’s nice to meet a true connoiseur, Mr. Garrison.”
CHAPTER 33
Joe Taylor sat at the edge of the king-sized bed in his suite, looking at his reflection in the large mirror that sat perched over the oak dresser. The man that stared back at him was determined, resolute. Inside, Joe felt a slight touch of unease and nervousness begin to flutter in his belly.
Don’t think about it, he thought. Concentrate on the task at hand.
He hadn’t gone down to the dining room for breakfast this morning. Instead, he’d ordered room service—freshly cut fruit, crepes, and coffee. He’d eaten breakfast calmly with the TV news on, not really paying attention to it. Chef Munchel had delivered his breakfast and they’d exchanged pleasantries. He’d killed the next few hours watching TV—cable news, the History Channel, VH1 Classics, not really paying attention to them, just thinking about what lay ahead: a luncheon meeting with the group at noon, in the main dining hall, where Joe would finally get to meet some of the players. Chef Munchel was to make a brief presentation on the menu items for the next few days, then the next few hours were devoted to free-form networking. The main event, the main kick-off dinner, was to commence at five p.m.
When it was closing in on eleven o’clock, Joe had turned off the TV and retreated to the bathroom. He’d taken a long, hot shower. When he was finished grooming, he’d gotten dressed slowly—underwear, socks, a short-sleeved dress shirt, a pair of slacks, tan slip-on dress shoes. Then he’d sat on the edge of his bed and contemplated his next move.
He and Dean had made a loose plan—Wayne Sanders and Bill Richards were present at Chef Munchel’s private event this week at Bent Creek. Dean had verified this last week after cracking Bent Creek’s computer network. He’d also provided Joe with photos and vital stats on both men. When Dean presented this information to him, his face had held a degree of shock, as if he’d been taken by surprise about something. “I’m going to show photos of both men to you so you’ll recognize them. I would strongly advise against approaching either of them, for fear they’ll know that you aren’t who you say you are.” Dean had hesitated a moment before showing him the first photo—Wayne Sanders.
The photo of Wayne that Dean provided showed a thin man with a face that appeared to be chiseled from granite—his chin and nose had sharply defined angles. He was bald, wore glasses, and had piercing eyes that made you want to immediately hunker down and hide, hoping his gaze passed you by. “I’m sure if he tilts his head the right way, he looks like a mad scientist,” Dean had commented last week at Joe’s home. “Look at those eyes. Guy looks like a fucking lunatic.”
And he did, too. Something about the way Wayne Sanders’s eyes seemed to glare at you gave Joe a bad feeling for reasons he couldn’t adequately explain. He had an intimidating look that probably served him well in the boardroom.
When Dean showed Joe the photo of Bill Richards, he gasped. He could see why Dean had hesitated.
The photo Dean presented was that of Earl Sanders.
Joe had looked at the photo for a full minute before he was able to meet Dean’s gaze. “I was able to find a file on Bent Creek’s network that contained information on Bill Richards. It’s a pseudonym, Joe. It was only used once, during the summer Carla disappeared, and it was used by Earl Sanders as a contact name for the lease of that office space in Casper. In fact, the name was used in the articles of incorporation papers that were filed with the county.”
“I don’t understand,” Joe had said. Looking at the face of a man he’d been cozying up to for the past few months, who he’d shared meals with, had been into his home, had invited to his friend Angus’s apartment in New York for that impromptu mixer, set off a worm of unease in him. He looked up at Dean. “Are you saying that...Earl Sanders...that he...”
“No,” Dean had stated firmly. He’d leaned over the table in the dining room, where they were sitting. “It doesn’t mean he had anything to do with her disappearance. We don’t know what happened to Carla, Joe. That’s what we’re trying to find out.”
“But the idea that Earl Sanders used an alias when he interviewed Carla tells me that this is leading to something very bad, and very wrong.” Joe could feel the dread intensifying. His heart was hammering madly in his chest.
“And that’s why you are going to avoid him when you see him at this event,” Dean had said. He’d fixed Joe pensively. “And to tell you the truth, I’m having severe reservations about you attending this thing.”
The plan they’d come up with was simple: meet Earl Sanders and Wayne Sanders at this evening’s banquet. Get George Spector to make the introduction to Wayne. Engage Earl in conversation about finance. Dean had provided Joe with a dossier on him and Wayne, as well as most of the other Bent Creek board members. He was to try to lure Earl to his suite under the guise of presenting some paperwork to him. Then—
“Your room will be bugged,” Dean had said. He’d provided Joe with monitoring devices before he’d left, which Joe had already placed in strategic, hidden places around the suite. “Get him talking. We want him to admit two things. One, that he participates in executive recruitment interviews for Mountain Funds in Casper, Wyoming. Second, we want a confirmation he interviewed Carla for a position. I’ve given you a script that will help you to guide him toward that goal. Once Carla gets into the picture you need to step in and reveal that you saw her recently, within the past two months, and were trying to get in touch with her. Watch his reaction. The way he responds is going to be what we need to make our next move.”
Joe took a deep breath. A part of him was consigned to the fact that in all likelihood it was very possible that Carla was dead. He had taken that fact and tucked it away in the back of his mind to be dealt with later. For now he had to concentrate on going through the motions. He had to get some kind of verification of what happened to Carla. It was still very possible she had been abducted and sold into slavery somewhere. The more Joe thought about it and connected the dots, the more that outcome seemed likely. Earl’s connections with Wayne Sanders, billionaire hedge fund tycoon who already had a complaint lodged against him for kidnapping, made this a very likely scenario. Recent investigative work Dean uncovered seemed to suggest that case was the only one that had ended with a good outcome. Dean had uncovered over two dozen missing persons cases that bore several uncanny ties. All of those ties had several things in common. And quite a few of them involved the victims last being seen heading to job interviews for companies that were found to be false.
Two of those companies were from the Casper, Wyoming area.
And in all those cases, the missing person was never found.
The missing shared common traits—they were all young, healthy, physically fit, with no drug or alcohol problems, and they were all between the ages of eighteen and thirty. They were of all races and of both sexes. And they’d all vanished without a trace.
Joe stood up, thinking about everything Dean had found. There’d been the case of Toni Hawthorne, a twenty-four year old law student who turned up missing after telling family and friends she was going to a job interview in an industrial park in Tempe, Arizona. Neither her family nor her friends could recall the name of the company, and phone records pulled from her cellular carrier revealed calls from a number that, according to the
initial police report, were from a company that claimed to have no knowledge of her. Dean’s later research indicated that shortly after the missing persons report was filed, the company in question dissolved and the phone number became inactive.
Toni Hawthorne’s was one of only several cases that bore striking similarities to Carla’s.
Dean had quietly looked into the backgrounds of several of the other victims. He’d even contacted Toni Hawthorne’s parents. What he learned was heartbreaking—Toni came from solid, middle-class stock. Her parents had never given up hope in finding her and she’d been missing for six years.
One thing that intrigued Joe about the victims was their profiles. Joe had seen a documentary on 20/20 about a middle-class twenty-something woman who had answered an employment ad for a modeling agency that was a front for a sex trafficking ring. The woman had gone through the vetting process thinking it was a legitimate job. It wasn’t until she was at the agency’s office one day that she was drugged and whisked to another location—a safe house for the operator of the ring. Once there, she learned her fate: she was a forced prostitute for wealthy clients. For the next two years she was ferreted around the world on luxury jets to service wealthy businessmen and government officials, all under the threat of beatings, torture, and worse—the torture and murder of her family if she ever tried to escape or alerted the police.
Joe had seen the 20/20 program and alerted Dean to it. While Dean told Joe that it was extremely unlikely Carla was abducted by a sex trafficking ring—modern day sex traffickers usually traded in runaway minors and adult immigrant workers—he said he would look into it. Months later, when the victim pattern began to emerge from Dean’s investigation, it seemed even less likely. “We have male and female victims,” he told Joe during one of their meetings. “Unfortunately, women make up the vast majority of victims in these cases. If men are the victims, again, they’re usually youths, runaways—”
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