Naked Ambition

by Rick Pullen

  “Ironically, no.”

  “Ironically?”

  “The drug kingpins usually resolve their problems with a gun or a knife, and they leave a mess behind. You can thank Senator Bayard for you still being alive.”

  “That’s hard to believe. I’d figure he’d want to personally kick my butt.”

  “It wasn’t easy, but he had to explain to his South American business associates that what may be good for their business in South and Central America was not so good for him. If any harm came to you, it would bring out every investigative reporter in the nation. To say nothing of the Justice Department investigators. And who would they point their finger at?”

  “I see.” Beck leaned forward in his chair and picked up his half cup of coffee. He was so fascinated by the stranger’s story, he failed to notice his coffee had gone cold. He signaled a waitress for a warm-up.

  The stranger continued. “He told them that, if they want to keep the laundry in operation, they would have to play it his way. Money and power speak louder than revenge on a single reporter, and there are other politicians to be bought.”

  “So if I pursue it, your folks will come after me?”

  “No. We think you should pursue it. Follow the trail.”

  “Why are you telling me all of this?”

  “As I said, politics is a big business in the United States. It has many competing factions.” He paused when the waitress arrived with Beck’s coffee. She offered some to the stranger, but he demurred. “My people happen to be of a faction that looks down on Bayard’s operation,” he added when she was out of earshot.

  “So you’re only doing this to harm the other side?”

  “Well, that is the business I am in.”

  Beck looked at the stranger. He seemed very matter-of-fact, even friendly, yet his words were cold. At least Beck now understood the stranger’s motive. He wanted to use Beck’s skills for his own purposes. Beck realized this guy was shrewd enough to know he would never walk away from such a big story. So they would use each other for their own purposes. He hadn’t met a source yet that didn’t want something in return for his cooperation.

  “You are headed to Grand Cayman again? Yes?” the stranger asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Then you may want to know there is an important meeting tomorrow morning at Bayard’s mansion.” “What kind of meeting?”

  “That is for you to find out. What can you tell me about Red?” “Red knows everything. If something happens to me, Red knows what to do with the information.” “We will find Red eventually.”

  “I doubt that. Unlike me, Red works undercover. Just like you. That’s why you haven’t found him yet.”

  “And Red does not speak. I find that unusual.”

  “He is extremely cautious. Obviously, much more than me. He probably figured my place was bugged all along.”

  “Perhaps. Or maybe he is mute.” The stranger smiled. “It does not matter. We will find him, just as we found you. It only takes time.”

  Beck felt cold. How long before they figured out there was no one named Red to protect him? “Why do you care if I am alive or dead?”

  “Senator Harvey is concerned. He still loves Ms. Kemper. And she apparently has feelings for you. He is very protective of her.”

  Beck thought of Jen, wondering if he would ever see her again. But right now, he had something more important to deal with.

  “Who is taking over the money machine from Bayard? I assume he can’t do it anymore.”

  The man stood and turned to leave.

  “Not so fast,” Beck said. “Who murdered the couple at the hotel?”

  “Oh that.” He turned back to face Beck. “The man at the hotel in Grand Cayman who helped Ms. Kemper with her luggage as you were leaving—”

  “Yeah? I remember that. He called her Mrs. Rikki.” “Precisely. He was an associate of the murderer.” “Why was he there?”

  “Obviously, he was looking for you. The murderer had never seen you before. He relied on the room number, and the hotel clerk got it wrong. You’re a very lucky man.”

  “Tell that to that poor couple.”

  “Alas, think of how the world would be different today if you were not alive. You have changed history.”

  Beck wasn’t moved by the stranger’s words. He still felt the guilt of the murders. “Did the murderer work for the drug cartels or was he working for Bayard?”

  “He wasn’t working for us. We were keeping an eye on his associate. Our man—the hotel valet—overheard him speaking to Ms. Kemper as you were leaving and saw your curious reaction. At the time, the killer’s associate still hadn’t figured out exactly what went wrong. All he knew was his people killed the wrong couple. As soon as you left, he hopped in the next cab. I suspect to follow you to the Grand Cayman airport and do you harm. But we intercepted him at a stoplight on the way when one of our people deliberately ran into the cab, smashing a fender.”

  “You wanted Bayard destroyed. But why?”

  “My people have their reasons.”

  “Are you with Serodynne?”

  “Perhaps. Perhaps not.”

  Beck’s head whirled. Could Geneva be behind all of this? Could Serodynne want to win the Pentagon contract so badly that it would not only destroy Senator Bayard, but kill an innocent couple to get it?

  “I can see you are slowly putting the pieces together,” said the stranger.

  Beck looked down at the table and fingered his mustache in thought. He’d never considered Geneva being behind any of this. But the more he thought about it, the more it made sense. Her connection was too convenient, and it had nearly destroyed his entire investigation. But he still couldn’t bring himself to believe it. Could she have faked their entire relationship? That was too painful to even consider.

  After a long pause, the stranger spoke again. “I can see you have a lot to put together still. I should leave you to your thoughts.”

  “Wait.” Beck looked up at him. “Why the constant reminder? Why the subterfuge for so many weeks?”

  “We wanted you to feel our presence. You can appreciate our abilities now, I presume.”

  “Yeah, but it didn’t stop me.”

  “Precisely. My people did not want you to stop. They wanted you to destroy Senator Bayard. Our constant presence during the last month should have long ago convinced you we are serious about this matter. We will protect you. Do you want to spend the rest of your life looking over your shoulder?” “Not really.”

  The man raised both palms in the air and looked to the ceiling. He then looked down at Beck, tilted his head, and raised an eyebrow—a salute to Beck’s reasoning. “It has truly been a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Rikki. You are a great reporter.”

  “If I had been really smart, I would have gotten the whole story in the first place and . . .”

  “And there is a possibility your story about Senator Bayard would never have gotten published. You did well.”

  “You knew exactly how far to let me play this string out so that your people got exactly what they wanted.”

  “If our paths cross again someday,” the stranger said, “it would be my honor to buy you a stiff drink and a good cigar. But if you don’t mind, I’ll keep my pants on.”

  Beck’s jaw dropped. He began to laugh. “What don’t you know?”

  “You have done your country a great service. You have saved it from an individual who was corrupting the system to take on enormous power.”

  “Only to be replaced by another corrupt individual, no doubt.”

  The man thrust his hand out to Beck. They shook hands.

  The man pivoted and walked out of the restaurant. Beck moved to the window and watched the stranger step into the backseat of a black town car, its door held open by a driver in a dark suit. In seconds, they were gone, heading down Estero Boulevard. Beck strained to read the license. The car had government plates.

  Finally, it was all beginning to make sense. Yet he still
had several pieces of the puzzle to put together. He realized the stranger believed he was several steps ahead of Beck. No doubt the stranger thought he was pulling one over on him, but Beck knew better.

  60

  Fahy, thought Beck, as he returned to his table. Could the guy work for Fahy? Or maybe he was a fixer for one of the political parties. Beck had heard of such things before. He knew he could rule out ties to Bayard. The stranger was doing everything he could to destroy the man—or so he wanted Beck to believe.

  But that didn’t explain how the stranger knew all about his conversation yesterday in his condo with Red. Beck glanced down at his plate. His breakfast was cold.

  Connect the dots, he told himself. The stranger bugs his condo a second time. But how? Baker just had it swept a second time, and they found nothing. Nothing.

  Beck reached for his wallet to pay for breakfast. He found it in his Windbreaker pocket along with his rental car keys and Fahy’s cell phone. He laid the phone and keys on the table as he rummaged through his billfold, seeking a twenty-dollar bill to pay the waitress.

  He stared at the phone. The stranger knew about yesterday’s conversation with Red. The stranger knew his whereabouts today. His brain lit up. He suddenly knew.

  Jumping up, he dropped the twenty on the table and was out the door and in his rental car in seconds. The northbound traffic moved slowly. It took him fifteen minutes to get off the island and find a large shopping center with an electronics store. He inquired about cheap gray burner phones and showed the clerk the one he’d received from Fahy.

  “We’ve got one exactly like that,” the sales clerk said.

  Beck jumped back in his car with his purchase and, in seconds, headed to his hotel, pressing his foot firmly on the gas pedal until he spotted blue lights flashing ahead. A cop stood on the side of the road, issuing a ticket to some poor guy with Michigan license plates. He slowed and went with the traffic flow, banging his hand on the wheel in frustration. He was eager to get back to his room to test his theory.

  When Beck reached his hotel room, he laid Fahy’s cell phone next to the new identical phone. Methodically, he took the back off each one, careful not to disconnect the battery. Fahy’s phone had a heavy-duty, long-life battery. The phone he had just purchased did not.

  Beck turned his attention to the phone he had just purchased and disconnected the battery. Two tiny screws held the guts of the device together. Using his tweezers as a screwdriver, he delicately twisted the screws and lifted the innards of the phone from their plastic shell. Looking closely, he examined a tiny circuit board and an object connected by a short dangling wire. He assumed it was a speaker of some kind. It amazed him how small everything was and how much manufacturers could cram into the body of a handheld phone.

  After learning from his electronics school cadaver, Beck turned his attention to the real patient. He removed the battery and then delicately, ever so delicately, removed the screws, just as he had taught himself to do five minutes ago. He purposefully laid each of the parts in sequence on the bed, and then carefully pulled the guts free from the plastic body.

  Oh Jesus, he thought, as he lifted the tiny device into the air. He recognized the tiny transmitter immediately, almost identical to the electronic listening device the technician had found in the wall socket of his condominium. His suspicions were correct. He took a deep, validating breath. His phone was bugged.

  That’s how the stranger knew about Red. Conversations at home, at work—wherever he carried the phone—were monitored. They obviously could track him with the phone’s GPS as well. That’s how the stranger knew where to find him today, whether on the crosswalks of downtown Washington or here in Fort Myers Beach, Florida.

  And that answered his question about the stranger’s business ties. The man worked with Fahy, who had given Beck the phone—not to talk privately, undetected, with him—but to monitor his investigation. Shit. How much did Fahy know?

  He was certainly not the Boy Scout he portrayed himself to be, and not the benevolent source Beck originally believed. Fahy was spying on him. He was using him. But for what purpose?

  Beck’s adrenaline surged. His body shook involuntarily. The rush came, not from his excitement for the hunt, but from anger of having the tables turned on him. He was now the hunted.

  He tried to think of all of the times he had carried the phone with him as Fahy had instructed. There were too many. He had to assume Fahy knew everything. They knew exactly where he was right now. Okay, he thought. How do I play this game?

  Beck quickly reassembled both phones and left them in his room while he traveled down to the hotel lobby, carrying his own cell phone. He walked out onto the beach, hesitated, then pulled the back off his phone and unsnapped the battery. There was no eavesdropping device inside that he could make out. He told himself he now had good reason to be paranoid.

  After waiting for his phone to reboot, he called Nancy. He explained his suspicions about the nonprofits allowing anonymous drug lords to dump tens of millions of dollars into the Patten campaign.

  “Can you run some searches on independent expenditures on Patten and Bayard’s behalf?”

  She said she would get the research staff on it right away.

  “For all I know, the Democrats may be doing it too,” he said.

  “Holy Jesus. The whole system may be corrupted.” “Can you also trace a government license plate for me?” “Can try.”

  Beck gave her the plate number of the stranger’s vehicle. “I’ll be in touch,” he said, and hung up.

  He dialed his condo. When his ancient answering machine picked up, he punched in his personal code to listen to his messages and immediately erased all of them.

  He liked the old machine because he could leave up to an hour of messages with no fear of being cut off. Sometimes when he was driving in his car and thinking about a story, he would call it and dictate some ideas before he forgot them. It was just so damned convenient for a technologically challenged writer.

  Beck rode the elevator back to his room. Unbelievable, he thought, he’d been had. He was one of the best goddamned investigative reporters in the nation, and he had been manipulated like a string puppet. How many layers were there to this onion? Maybe it was a good thing he wasn’t as good as he thought he was.

  Back in his room, he picked up the bugged phone and called his condo again. Four rings later, his answering machine kicked in. He placed the phone on the windowsill, walked into his bathroom about twenty feet away, and began to talk.

  “Red, it’s Beck. The next time I call you, I want you to listen carefully.”

  He walked back to the phone and hung up, then immediately punched redial. When the answering machine picked up, he punched in his message code and listened. Beck heard his words to Red as clearly as if he had held the phone in his hand rather than them being transmitted from across the room.

  He hung up, pulled Inspector Tomlinson’s business card from his wallet, and called the number, remembering to insert the international code. The inspector was not in, he was told. Did he want to leave a message? He explained who he was and that he was inquiring about the recent double homicide in the hotel. She said she would pass on the message.

  Beck turned off the phone and looked at it. Just how the eavesdropping device inside it worked—he didn’t know. All that mattered was that it did work, because now he had a plan. He couldn’t erase the wide grin on his face. He had just sent his first message to Fahy, and Beck knew Fahy was listening.

  61

  Inspector Tomlinson welcomed Beck into his office the next morning. He offered him coffee from a steaming pot on a corner table, surrounded by stacks of paper files. Beck took it gladly. It was strong, almost too much so.

  His plane had been nearly an hour late yesterday, but he had still managed to race over to Government House and comb through more of Bayard’s real estate files before the offices closed their doors for the day. In the few hours he pounded the keys on their computer
, he traced every one of the buyers of vacant lots in Bayard’s development—every corporate entity and partnership—and made copies. He spent his evening in a hotel room cross-referencing every corporate office, director, and partner, and didn’t look out his window onto the Caribbean sunset once.

  Of the thirty-one sales he found—Geneva had missed some—he discovered all of them shared the same names. The same people turned up as officers in one company and directors in another, and again as members of various partnerships. But the one name they all had in common was Roger Kindred, who created all of the corporations and partnerships, using his law practice as the mailing address for all. Clearly, this tight-knit group used the land transactions to launder dirty money. Beck didn’t crawl into bed until well past midnight.

  Tomlinson apologized for having to meet so early, but he had another engagement at eight thirty. In preparation for the meeting, Beck drove his rental car to police headquarters and left Fahy’s phone and the newer burner phone in the glove compartment. His conversation with Tomlinson was private. He did not want Fahy or the stranger listening in.

  No, Tomlinson said, the murder case was not closed. They had plenty of forensic evidence, but none of it matched their only suspect, Sancho Franz, the man Beck saw briefly in the hotel lobby that morning.

  “The man in the white suit? With the white straw hat?” Beck asked.

  “Word is, he works for the Mexicans,” Tomlinson said. “Franz is a midlevel enforcer of some kind. Not really high up in the cartel, but at or near the top here, and that makes him dangerous—very dangerous. He likes to keep his hands clean, a step or two away from the dirty work. So he’s hard to pin down. We have our suspicions, but unfortunately, we’ve been unable to directly connect him to anything.”

  “So someone working for him carried out the murders?”

  “That’s what we suspect. We traced a phone call he made the evening of the murders, to a telephone booth not far from your hotel. Believe it or not, we still have a few of those around. When we questioned him, he told us he dialed a wrong number, though he talked for nearly two minutes. He couldn’t explain that. We haven’t been able to figure out who was on the receiving end. I assume it was the murderer.”