by Mark Treble
One was St. Louis. Carly Thibedeaux knew St. Louis Police Chief Sandy Westlake personally. Danny had met Westlake during the nationwide kidnapping investigation, but Carly and Sandy had hit it off immediately. She had gone with Ethan for several days of ride-alongs. They were source material for a series Ethan was writing for Life Continues, his column in the New Orleans Daily Post.
Sandy Westlake took the call immediately. She congratulated the corporal on the new stripes and they chatted about Officer Ding Dong (don’t ask) and Officer Gerbil (you can ask, you just won’t like the answer). After a few minutes Carly got to the point.
The Martyrs Murders, as they were being called, had made the national news. Chief Westlake asked how she could help. An hour later Dr. Garrett Mullalley was on the phone with his NOPD counterpart. Mullalley was a lot of people’s go-to guy for weird psych shit. This was weird psych shit. Lieutenant Grzgorczyk joined the conversation and twenty minutes later Mullalley had joined the team.
The shrink was good at what he did, which included self-promotion. He promised NOPD most of his time while in town, just reserving two afternoons for university guest lectures. And five evenings for book signings. And, his contract included the right to publish a book on his work.
Something had happened about ten years ago that sparked murder in Steve Clemons’s heart. Every death in the group was suspect. Several members of MAPTA had died over the years, of course, including some murders and several accidents. Ten years ago the deaths came quickly and in astounding numbers. There had to be a stressor.
George Talbot might have been the first one. He had a history of heart trouble, so when his heart stopped beating the death was assumed to be from natural causes. Silverstein interviewed Carol Talbot and learned that her husband had experienced abdominal pain and numbness in his face one evening after dinner. When he vomited Carol called for an ambulance, but by the time it arrived George’s heart had stopped.
The family physician was contacted by phone. George Talbot’s symptoms were not atypical for a heart attack. Nausea and vomiting occur frequently, and numbness in the face is due to reduced blood flow as the heart struggles to move oxygen throughout the body. Silverstein was ready to chalk it up to a heart attack until he talked with Goldberg.
The former EMT had seen those symptoms in what turned out to be poisoning. She’d been raised in New Hampshire and did her EMT work there before moving to New Orleans. She had seen two toddlers come down with similar symptoms after eating garden flowers.
NOPD didn’t have the budget to pay for exhumation and autopsy, but Carol Talbot did. Her nephew (and adoptive son) argued against disturbing the final rest of his uncle. As a teenager Joel had looked up to his uncle and was very fond of him. But, Carol went ahead and ordered exhumation and paid for an autopsy.
The results were inconclusive. There were minute traces of hypaconitine and mesaconitine found in his intestines, but those could be explained by an over-the-counter supplement he had been taking. The supplement included a small amount of aconite.
Steve Clemons had kept meticulous records, of course, so he could bill clients for every possible minute of his time. He had been at the Talbots’ home for dinner three days before George’s death. So, another detective was put on building a time-line of Clemons’s activities over the past ten years. Joel Vanderveer offered to assist. If Clemons had killed his adoptive father, he wanted to help prove it. The investigation was woefully short-handed, so Vanderveer was brought in to help on Clemons’s time-line.
Four other heart attacks among members occurred within five months of George Talbot’s death. There had been no autopsies. One of the dead had been cremated and families of the other three refused to allow exhumation. A dead end. Maybe it was coincidence; all of the deceased members were at an age where heart attack was a possibility.
It took weeks to track Clemons’s activities to murders and accidents. In the first ten days of the study five accidents had been recategorized as murders, and six natural deaths were now ruled suspicious. There still wasn’t a lot to go on. And, Clemons couldn’t be connected to all of them. There had to be an accomplice, which made things a whole lot more complicated.
Dr. Mullalley interviewed everybody at Fitch and Clemons. Clemons Sr. had been institutionalized seven years ago. Until then he ran the place with an iron fist. The law practice was a sole proprietorship, not a partnership. None of the other lawyers had much say in what was done or much access to information other than what Clemons Sr., and now Clemons Jr., allowed.
Clemons Jr. was a carbon copy of his dad. Iron-fisted, secretive and miserly. Nobody at the firm liked him except Myra Hartag. And she was new. When nobody else would hire her following a suspension of her license, Clemons picked her up cheap. Hartag was effusive about Steve Clemons. It was hardly any wonder that a lawyer with highly questionable ethics would admire Steve Clemons, an embezzling serial killer.
Joel Vanderveer spoke highly of Clemons, but Joel was just a kid. Clemons was close to his aunt and had offered the young man a job. Vanderveer had been helpful in other ways, but his assessment of Steve Clemons was of little value.
The staff at Clemons’s large home had little use for the guy. There were two chefs, each of whom worked part time. For Clemons, part time meant twelve hours on and twelve hours off. Each chef worked eighty-four hours a week because Clemons never knew when the urge would strike for, say, a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, or Beef Wellington, or anything else.
The housekeeper despised him. The maids were tired of picking up Clemons’s dirty clothes scattered hither and yon, the butler was ready to quit because Clemons called him “boy,” and the black man had bitten his tongue too many times. And the chauffeur was actively seeking another job. It seemed Steve Clemons would take car out himself late at night and return with it covered in mud and grime. The chauffeur was pretty sure Clemons had been up to no good. So was everybody else.
Mullalley wanted to see Clemons’s work product with his MAPTA clients. That was not going to happen in this incarnation. The shrink was stuck.
He went back to Clemons’s law school days. Nobody had liked him, but nobody thought him capable of murder. Perjury, embezzlement, extortion and a number of other misdeeds would raise no eyebrows, but murder was too far out.
Clemons’s neighbors didn’t know him, despite his thirteen year residency in the neighborhood. He spent a term on the New Orleans ACLU Board, but was suspected of being a closet racist. And not too far in the closet at that.
The guy was unpleasant, miserly, secretive and mean. There just was nothing to explain the murders.
Dr. Mullalley turned his attention to a possible accomplice. In his younger days Clemons Jr. hadn’t run with any particular crowd. It might be that none would have him. He had been a frequent visitor to bordellos, but that described most heterosexual men in New Orleans in the 1980s. The brothel owners (several of whom were still going strong running private ‘social clubs’) had no memory of him. That meant he hadn’t spent a lot of money and he hadn’t beaten up the girls.
Of course the police had checked arrest records and run Clemons through as many databases as they could. During thirty-five years of driving he had accumulated four speeding tickets. A single arrest for driving under the influence at age twenty-two had been dismissed because the breathalyzer test had been right on the margin. There were no outstanding parking tickets, no citations for littering, nothing. There was no nothing.
Danny met with Mullaley to go over the initial assessment. “Squat is what you got.” Danny was pretty blunt with most people; something about Mullaley rubbed him wrong so he was especially curt. And, Mullaley agreed with him.
They had no explanation for what had triggered a serial killer’s rampage.
Chapter Fifteen
When the size of the embezzlement looked like it was going to exceed a billion dollars, the U.S. Treasury Department became very interested. The money had gone to Vanuatu, evidently, but how much and throu
gh what channels was not yet clear.
Danny asked Mike Allison for some help in understanding what the issues were. “Fuck if I know,” was Allison’s response. No help there. Danny tried the prosecutors’ office and got a verbose and windy version of “Fuck if I know.” Looks like this one belonged solely to the Feds.
A Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Treasury tried calling the U.S. Embassy in Vanuatu only to find that there was none. Affairs were handled by the U.S. Embassy in Papua New Guinea.
“Mr. Ambassador, Deputy Assistant Secretary Bartlett here. We have a problem with money laundering in Vanuatu. No links found yet to terrorism or organized crime, but the amount looks to be pretty big.” The Ambassador had a busy schedule and tried to pass the call off to his Deputy, with no success. “Sir, the amount could buy a few nuclear weapons. Can you send an investigator there?”
That got the Ambassador’s attention. After listening to the Treasury Official he called the Regional Security Officer. “Millard, I need you to call this Bartlett fellow at Treasury and then send somebody to Vanuatu.”
“Yes, sir,” said the Regional Security Officer. It’s what everybody says to an Ambassador before hanging up and throwing something.
“Margo, get in here.” Margo was his long-suffering secretary. She figured more suffering was ahead. Margo was quite perceptive.
“I’ve missed my last two anniversaries and if I miss the one next week my wife will kill me. We’ve got one guy on home leave and the other one is in the hospital after that unfortunate accident with the wild boar. Somebody has to go to Vanuatu. Any ideas other than me? How would you like to go to Vanuatu?” The RSO was desperate. Margo said she would make a couple of phone calls.
Thus did one Daniel Armenian, retired State Department security officer, get a phone call in Fiji while wondering if the bar would extend him additional credit. “Dan, it’s Margo. I know your consulting businesses went in the toilet after the 2008 election. Are you up for a contract position for a few days?”
Daniel Armenian thought it prudent to limit his salivating for a moment in order not to appear too eager. “What’s it about? I have some free time coming up.” True, if “coming up” meant the rest of his life.
Margo explained the situation. “The Vanuatu government is slow in cooperating with Treasury. Very slow. Motor Vehicle driver’s license window slow. We need somebody savvy to go to Vanuatu and sniff out what the truth is.”
Margo talked State into giving Mr. Armenian a short-term contract to nose around and see what he could find. After all, Mr. Armenian was already in neighboring Fiji. What could it hurt?
Daniel Armenian hopped a plane to Papua New Guinea to get a briefing and pick up his official passport. “I’ll need three thousand a day, of course, plus expenses.” He didn’t reckon on the Regional Security Officer having a bad hair day.
“It’s fifteen hundred a day in fees and a budget that wouldn’t buy any extras. Take it or leave it.” The RSO only had so large a budget, and Mr. Armenian’s exalted view of his own worth did nothing to increase it. So, Daniel Armenian flew into Bauerfield International Airport in Port Vila. He splurged on a hotel room with its own bath, and called someone whose name he knew at the Vanuatu Central Bank. The contact was a referral of a referral of a referral. The name Daniel Armenian carried very little weight.
“Margo, it’s Dan.” Armenian knew the importance of stringing the checkbook owner along. “I’ve got a few leads and have already made contact at the Vanuatu Central Bank.” Margo was properly impressed and asked that Daniel Armenian call again in two days.
Mr. Armenian was not one to give up easily. He went to the Vanuatu bank in question and explained that one of their American account holders might be in trouble. They took his name and wished him a good day.
Then he gave up. Drinks with little umbrellas on the beach took up three day, and he reported in on the second of those. “I’ve been to the bank, they know what I’m after. I’ll need a few more days to finish this up.” Margo got the RSO to approve another couple of days. Grudgingly, but he did approve it.
After the fearless investigation of little umbrellas, Daniel Armenian got an itch he had to scratch. He visited a sports book and in the first hour he was up three hundred dollars. Knowing he had the touch, he increased the size of his bets. The following day he was ready to leave, just as soon as he paid his hotel bill. And therein lay a problem.
Daniel Armenian was dead broke. He couldn’t pay the bill because he had left all his money at the sport book. The hotel owner was very understanding. “Sir, I do not see a problem here, only an opportunity. For you. Of course, you cannot leave the country without settling your hotel bill. Surely you understand.”
Armenian understood, he just wasn’t happy with it. The hotel manager added that his brother-in-law worked in a bank (yes, that bank) and might be able to help. “Hear him out, he’s very generous and has offered to cover the entire hotel bill. He just needs a little assistance from you. Oh, and the two uniformed police officers aren’t here to keep you prisoner, they’re just here to keep you company until my brother-in-law arrives.”
Armenian thought to himself, yeah, that’s your story and you’re sticking to it. Right. I’m a prisoner.
The officers largely ignored Mr. Armenian and joked between themselves. “Those two Australian prisoners are almost through their sentence and will need replacing on the pig farms.” … “Yeah, we can’t let the local prisoners shovel pig shit, they stay around after they’re released but the foreigners leave immediately.” … “You don’t say?”
Mr. Armenian suspected this was a show put on for his benefit, and he was correct. He also suspected that the show was intended to convince him to do something specific and probably distasteful.
Well, shoveling pig shit was pretty distasteful. By the time the brother-in-law arrived Daniel Armenian had decided he would do whatever it was, so long as he could keep his clothes on and there wasn’t too much blood. And those two conditions might be negotiable.
The banker invited Mr. Armenian to a small resort where he could have a refreshing drink while they talked. “Mr. Armenian, my poor sister is dying. She will be gone in just a few months and there is nothing the doctors can do about it. She would love to come back to Vanuatu, but she’s not able to travel due to her illness. She wants to have some reminder of home before she passed away. She would like some simple ankle rattles, a typical craft of our nation.” The banker would pay Mr. Armenian’s hotel bill if he would just agree to deliver the ankle rattles.
Whatever his other failings, Daniel Armenian was not stupid. There was something being smuggled here. What, he couldn’t tell. He asked to see the rattles. They were relatively small, shells and other crap tied to a braided rope that went around the wearer’s ankle. He picked one up and shook it. Unsurprisingly it rattled.
“Now, Mr. Armenian, we need you to follow a specific itinerary in order to deliver these local crafts. Surely you can understand.” The banker laid out the itinerary and Armenian caught on immediately. He would travel from Port Vila to Brisbane and, with a couple of connections, wind up in Santiago de Chile. From there it was an easy transfer through Bogota to Caracas, Venezuela, where the banker’s poor sick sister lived. And it would be first class. And Mr. Armenian would be paid $50,000 U.S. Because, of course, the poor sick sister really wanted the ankle rattles.
“Of course I understand.” The itinerary avoided American soil. Which, Mr. Armenian thought, was undoubtedly the reason for the itinerary. “I’ll be happy to do this. I will need some of the money up front, of course.” The banker agreed. Of course.
Mr. Armenian took the ankle rattles, packed them away and got on the plane for Brisbane. Two days later he was met in Caracas where he traded the rattles for bearer bonds in the amount of forty one thousand dollars. He already had nine thousand in cash. Mr. Armenian then boarded a plane for Miami using the same State Department official passport that had gotten him waved through Customs at every
stop.
Armenian called Margo to say he was at the Vanuatu airport and getting on a plane to the U.S. Something had spooked the bank and they wouldn’t talk to him any more.
There was maybe half a pound of rattling stones between the two bracelets, not enough of anything to make a difference to anyone. Mr. Armenian had no clue what had gone down and didn’t care.
Steve Clemons cared. The two hundred flawless-D five carat diamonds were worth some seventy million wholesale. Still about ten billion to go, of course, but Steve Clemons had all the time in the world.
Chapter Sixteen
“So you’re Joel’s young lady friend, Veronica. It’s a pleasure to meet you.” Carol Talbot had invited her adopted son and his girlfriend to dinner. Nothing fancy, of course, and certainly nothing formal. Carol Talbot was one of those wealthy people who were comfortable with their wealth and didn’t need to flaunt it.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mrs. Talbot.” Veronica Meritt was mindful of her manners.
“Please call me Carol. Everybody else does. Joel tells me you’re going to be a nurse.” Carol’s voice and face expressed genuine interest. Veronica thought for a second that was so different from her nephew and adopted son. Joel’s words often showed interest but his face and voice seemed to say he was bored unless talking about himself.
