Pyramid Deception

by Austin S. Camacho

  “Just give me the number,” Hannibal said, turning a palm to Cindy. “I’ll make the call. And put that thing on speaker.”

  Hannibal sat on the desk and punched in the numbers. After four rings a woman answered.

  “Jason? What’s wrong? You know we can’t talk during the day.” From the voice, Hannibal was prepared to believe that Jason was dating Dixie Carter or Paula Dean. This woman would be older than Jason, although she was still preserving her Southern belle accent.

  “Ma’am, this is Hannibal Jones. I’m a private investigator and as you can see I’m calling from Jason Moore’s office.”

  “Is he there? Is Jason all right?”

  Hannibal held up a finger to stop Jason from answering. “Yes, ma’am, Jason is right here, but he’s had a bad shock and we thought you might be able to help.”

  “It’s about the money, isn’t it?” Irene asked. “Oh Jason, if you’re there, I’m so sorry, hon. Mine is all gone too. But I know what happened and I know who’s to blame and I swear we going to make him pay.”

  Hannibal saw Cindy’s face light up, but he knew it was too soon for celebrating. “You know who’s responsible?” Hannibal asked the phone. “If that’s true I might be able to help.”

  “I can’t,” Irene said. Then in a whisper she added, “Not over the phone. He might be listening, or recording or something.”

  “Then meet with me and if you’ve taken a loss I promise to help you get your money back.”

  “Can you help me get my life back?”

  What did that mean? “I’ll try. Where are you?” And why, he wondered, was she so paranoid?

  “Great Falls,” she replied, still whispering. “I’ll look for Jason at eleven o’clock in front of the Safeway.”

  The line went dead.

  -3-

  Silence gripped the room. Hannibal was considering the conversation, trying to mentally milk all the meaning out of Irene’s words and her tone.

  “I don’t think there’s much chance it’s a trap,” Hannibal said. “She sounds spooked and angry. This might turn out to be easier than I expected.”

  “What time do you want to head up there?” Jason asked. “It’s a good half hour drive. And do we meet someplace or ride in the same car?”

  “We?” Hannibal said with a small smile. “No, Jason, that’s not how this works. You don’t go along. If you’re dating this woman she’ll think she can hold back with you there. And there may be things she doesn’t want to admit in your presence. In fact, you don’t even talk to her on the phone between now and when I see her, understand?” Jason sat back in his chair, looking unsure.

  “Hannibal’s right,” Cindy said with a condescending tone. “Don’t worry, I’ll protect your interests.”

  “Sorry, babe,” Hannibal said. “Best if I do this alone.”

  “No,” Cindy said, stepping closer to Hannibal. “I have too much invested here. I’ll go with you.”

  “No, you won’t.”

  “Damn it, Hannibal, you can’t just push me out of this.”

  Cindy was very close, in his face. Hannibal bit back his reflexive response and slid off his Oakley sunglasses. His face was passive.

  “This is a mistake,” he said. “I know you want to join me, but it’s a bad plan.”

  “Well it’s our plan,” Cindy said.

  Hannibal glanced toward Jason who was watching them very closely. Then he took Cindy’s arm in a gentle but firm grip.

  “Can I talk to you in your office for a minute? Please?”

  After a couple of deep breaths Cindy marched out of Jason’s office with Hannibal close behind. She walked to her own office and spun toward him when she was in front of her desk. Hannibal quietly closed the office door.

  “Where do you get off…?” Cindy began.

  “Shut up!” Hannibal’s voice was sharp and low, the voice he used when he was challenged in a bar. “This is my business and you will not tell me how to do my job.”

  “Well if this is business then I’m the client,” Cindy said, hands on hips. “I’m the one…”

  “What? The one paying me? Like I’m the hired help now?” Hannibal said through clenched teeth. “You better dig yourself. What you are is the woman who invested all her money without one word to her man. Not one word, when you got an expert standing in front of you every day.”

  “Oh? I’m supposed to consult you about my business now?” Cindy’s Cuban accent came out stronger as her voice rose. Cindy spat out her next sentence in coarse Spanish, waving her hands in Hannibal’s face.

  “Speak English,” he said, louder than he intended.

  “I said I see you every day in your dumpy little flat in Southeast. Since when are you an expert in financial matters?”

  It was Hannibal’s turn to get in her face. He leaned in on her, fists clenched and shaking at his sides. “No, I ain’t rich, and probably never will be. What I am is an expert in fraud, schemes, and deals that are too good to be true. Not that you need to be an expert to know you don’t put all your eggs in one basket. But that really don’t matter right now. Right now you’re in trouble. Here’s the facts that matter. You’re the person who got you in this fix. I’m the guy who can get you out of it. So right now you need to sit your ass down and shut the fuck up.”

  While he talked Hannibal poked a gloved finger at the spot between Cindy’s eyes. She slowly stepped backward until she was behind her desk. Then the energy seemed to leak out of her like steam, and she lowered into her chair. Through it all she never lost eye contact with him. When she spoke again her voice was childlike and weak.

  “I need to do something.”

  “What you need to do is go home and get some rest,” Hannibal said. “What you need to do is trust me. This is what I do, after all. I’ll drive up to Great Falls and get a feel for the area and scope out the meeting place in daylight. Then we’ll do the meet and we’ll see if I can get a trail to follow. I’ll let you know what I find out first thing in the morning. Now grab your bag and whatever you absolutely need to work on today. I’m taking you home.”

  After dropping Cindy off, Hannibal doubled back to his own place in the District. There he did a little basic research about Great Falls and Googled up the location of the town’s only Safeway. Then he moved to the kitchen and threw a steak under the broiler. While it browned he cleaned and function checked his .40 caliber Sig Sauer P229 because, well, you never know. He turned the steak, tossed a salad together, and ate in the living room watching NFL Countdown on ESPN. He didn’t really care much about the team standings, but he loved the “C’mon Man” segments.

  Four or five times he reached for the telephone to check up on Cindy, but each time decided not to. Twice he stood up to go talk to her father Ray, who lived upstairs from him. Both times he decided that she might not have told him what had happened, and might not want him to know. Even if she did, she would want to tell him herself.

  Around seven o’clock he climbed into the Volvo he secretly called Black Beauty, cranked an obscure Jimi Hendrix blues CD and pointed west across the city. He crossed into Virginia and followed the George Washington Parkway north along the Potomac until he could hop onto the Georgetown Pike, the primary road slicing through his destination.

  A pleasant forty-minute drive put him in Great Falls, which was not so much a town as a sprawling area of outsized homes and expansive wooded lots parked along the Potomac River. Named for the Great Falls National Park, the little village was a loose collection of winding roads, riding trails and country clubs. The Safeway supermarket anchored a shopping center at the intersection of Georgetown Pike and Walker Road. Across Walker sat a little village center with restaurants and shopping but, as Hannibal quickly confirmed, not one decent place to get coffee. Luckily he didn’t have to go far down Route 7, back toward Tysons Corner, before he found a Starbucks. Hannibal always found them convenient places to waste a couple of hours. As long as you keep your laptop open and keep the coffee coming, nobody bo
thers you.

  At 11 pm Hannibal left his car in the village center parking lot and walked across the two lane blacktop to the Safeway store. Everything was closed, as expected, leaving the area vacant. Traffic was nil, although a handful of cars had been left in the parking lot.

  The shopping center, or strip mall as Hannibal’s father would have called it, was L shaped with the Safeway store forming the short leg of the L. The space between the Safeway building and the longer building opened into a wooded area. To make things homey, someone had decided to lay a sidewalk connecting the two buildings and plant a couple of tables in the cement at the corner. Hannibal sat at one of the permanently attached chairs, working at not looking threatening. He was under one of the few streetlamps set way too far apart out there, but he doubted there was a crime problem in that area. The police always take care of the wealthy citizens, and some of the richest in the county lived in the mansions surrounding him.

  The cricket serenade from the surrounding woods was so loud it almost drowned out the sound of a car door opening. The moon highlighted a blonde woman stepping out of a black Lexus, one of the vehicles parked in the lot. The black cashmere shawl across her shoulders - Cindy would have called it a pashmina - was her only practical garment, protecting her from the evening cool. Her heels not only announced her steps loudly, but would be useless if she had to run more than five steps. Like Hannibal she wore black, but her silk dress caught and reflected the moonlight, making her stand out as she walked toward him.

  She hesitated as she approached him, so he stood. “I’m Hannibal Jones. You would be Irene?”

  “I’m so sorry,” she said, stepping to within arm’s length. “I didn’t expect you to be…I was afraid Wash might have sent you. He’s having me followed, I’m sure of it.”

  Up close Hannibal saw that she was quite striking, a statuesque blonde, trim but solid, with the kind of complexion that didn’t need much makeup to highlight her finely drawn features.

  “UVA? By way of Alabama I’m guessing.”

  “How in the world?” She shook her head in feigned disbelief. “Well yes I did my time in Charlottesville, and I was born and raised in Mobile. Now where’s Jason?”

  Straight to the point. Hannibal liked that. “We decided it might be wiser for us to meet alone.”

  “Shoot. I wanted to apologize,” she said. “Please tell him I am very sorry for getting him involved in all this.”

  “I’ll pass that along. How did you two meet?”

  “Well, you see, my parents passed while I was still in college,” she said, waving a hand as if she was keeping rhythm with her story. “I inherited quite a little bit of money. Didn’t need it, just sat there collecting interest for a while. Then I met Wash.”

  “Wash?” Hannibal asked as she started walking slowly along the front of the shopping center. This was a diversion, he knew. Some people had to tell a story their own way, and she would have to build toward the uncomfortable part of her tale. He presumed that was the part about committing adultery with a young lawyer. It was often more work to get people to stay on task than to let them wander toward the answers he wanted. He walked with her.

  “Wash. My husband,” Irene explained. “George Washington Monroe. His parents must have loved the presidents. He was a hot property at the time, an investment genius I heard. Anyway, Wash just swept me off my feet. I swear I was on my way to old maid city when he found me, last in my sorority to tie the knot. That was seven years ago.”

  “But things have changed?” Hannibal asked. They were approaching the tavern at the far end of the shopping center, but from the sound of things even it was empty on a week night.

  “Don’t get me wrong, Mr. Jones, George is a good husband and all, but he treats me like an idiot. Never lets me know a thing about his business, the finances, nothing. Gave me a fine home and a nice car and an allowance, but that’s it. I am an educated woman, Mr. Jones. Anyway, I met Jason at a fund-raiser and we were like,” she clapped her hands together, “POW, lightning striking, you know?”

  They had reached the end of the building. Hannibal looked up and down the empty Georgetown Pike, then turned and followed her back the way they had come.

  “So you wanted to help him,” Hannibal said, prompting her to get on with it.

  “Not right away. But Wash started getting mean to me. Ignoring me. Not touching me, if you know what I mean. And then I found out that he had a woman on the side. Probably more than one. That was enough for me. He didn’t even have the decency to be embarrassed about it when I confronted him. That’s when I got the idea to make Jason rich.”

  Hannibal nodded as they walked back through the darkness. “I see. You planned to have revenge on your husband by helping Jason cash in on an opportunity your husband was working on.”

  “He was very particular who he would take into his investments,” she said with a sly grin. “But I managed to convince him that I knew a good prospect for him. I figured Jason would make a fortune, then I could marry him and he could support me in the style I’m accustomed to.”

  “But Mrs. Monroe, you have money of your own, don’t you?”

  “That’s another thing.” She stopped at the corner by the tables, under the streetlamp. “I thought about leaving Wash, but when I went to check on what was left of my trust fund I found out that Wash had emptied it out on me. I got an accountant to look into it, but he says there’s no paper trail and it would be almost impossible to prove he squandered the money away. Now I got nothing of my own.” Then, as an afterthought, she said, “Besides, I love Jason. I want to be with him all the time. And he loves me.” Then she looked over her shoulder and moved closer to the building, partially into the shadows. “I can’t stay long, Mr. Jones. I’ll be missed.”

  “You know, Jason lost all his savings in this investment plan your husband is running,” Hannibal said. “He deserves your help. And it’s pretty obvious that your husband’s investment plan isn’t completely on the up and up.”

  “Honey, I don’t know anything about his investments and stuff,” Irene said. She was fidgeting, and Hannibal knew he was running out of time before her fear sent her home.

  “I understand. Who knows him best? Do you have any friends I could trust to give me the truth?” When she clenched her lips together he added, “My woman lost all her savings too. She and Jason are friends and he thought he was doing her a favor.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Irene said. “But getting at Wash’s friends through me? That would be like going around your elbow to get to your asshole. None of them trusts me or even likes me. Except. Maybe Vera and Kevin.”

  Hannibal managed to stifle a chuckle when the Alabama idiom sneaked through. “Vera and Kevin? Who are they?”

  “Kevin was Wash’s personal assistant for a while,” Irene said, getting excited and talking with her hands. “He was in the Navy, I think. Decorated war hero. Vera did cleaning around the house when Kevin worked for Wash and we got to be friends. Then Wash fired them both.”

  That raised one of Hannibal’s eyebrows. “Were they let go because of something one of them found out?”

  “I don’t know. It was right after these fellows came to the house and were questioning Kevin about Wash. I thought Wash sent them in to see who knew what, so maybe. Look I’ve got to go.”

  “Just one more question, please,” Hannibal said, touching her arm very lightly. “When you found out your husband had raided your trust fund, why didn’t you go to the police?”

  “Honey, you don’t get it,” she said, staring into Hannibal’s eyes. “Wash is a very influential man around here. The police would all be on his side. I hired a private detective to look into it, but Wash got him run out of town. I hired an accountant to investigate but Wash scared him away.”

  “Well if that’s true, there are people who might know something valuable,” Hannibal said. Over Irene’s shoulder he saw a black sedan turn off Walker Road and roll toward them, along the front of the supermarket.
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  The car turned left at the corner. As it passed in front of them Hannibal saw that the passenger window was half way down. Irene spun to face the car. A black tube rested on the edge of the lowered window. The tube spit fire three times with a sound like a woman’s polite cough. Irene took a halting step backward. Then her head snapped back and she started to fall.

  -4-

  Before Irene’s body hit the sidewalk Hannibal was diving forward, his pistol already drawn. He hit the ground hard, scraping his elbow on the cement. He was prepared to return fire but the engine of the black sedan roared and it sped off across the parking lot.

  Hannibal hesitated for no more than a second before reaching to Irene’s neck to check for a pulse. Two angry red entry wounds showed on her chest and a third glared at him from her forehead. She had been dead before her head cracked on the sidewalk.

  Four seconds after the third bullet hit Irene, Hannibal was up and running along the front of the shopping center, racing toward the killer’s car. The sedan was edging onto the exit to Georgetown Pike. Hannibal was panting so hard it almost drowned out the sound of his frantic footsteps. This arrogant bastard had killed the woman right in front of him. As if he was no threat. As if he was just another bystander.

  “Oh, hell no,” Hannibal said as the car turned right onto the street. He burst onto the road behind the car, still running hard, straining to read the license plate in the dark. As the sedan began to pull away on the open straightaway Hannibal raised his gun and fired on the run. The automatic’s slide slammed back and forward, rocking the pistol in his hand five times.

  Then there was nothing more he could do. He knew he had hit the car, but not the driver. The car sped away becoming smaller in the distance until it got over the first hill and disappeared. Hannibal stood for a moment with his hands on his knees and watched his murderous quarry disappear. Then he looked around. It seemed that no one had reacted to the gunfire. Well, the houses on either side of the deserted road were all set a good hundred yards back, their privacy protected by tall trees.