The Devil May Care

by David Housewright

  “The army asked, where’s the rest of our trailers? The Kuwaitis put them off for a few days by claiming that the delay in delivery was caused by the army’s failure to have military escorts available for the trucking convoys that carried the trailers. Eventually the army said screw it, and sent a detachment to pick them up. Only there were no more trailers. There had never been as many trailers as CBE had promised, and CBE and the Kuwaitis knew it going in. The army went to have a talk with Baird. Unfortunately, he had disappeared at approximately the same time as the army sent its detachment to Kuwait, disappeared along with forty-eight-point-seven million dollars.”

  “Wow,” I said.

  “McKenzie, he’s not even in the Top Twenty of the crooks who ripped us off in Iraq,” Cooper said. “It was a massive clusterfuck.”

  “In any case, the DOJ has been looking for him ever since,” Marin said. “No luck. We’ve been unable to find Baird. More to the point, we’ve been unable to find the money. We still can’t figure out how he or the money got out of Iraq. Which isn’t to say that Baird is some kind of criminal mastermind. There was so much chaos over there…”

  “But then we got a break,” Cooper said.

  “Yes,” Marin agreed. “We got a break. McKenzie, have you ever heard of the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network?”

  “No,” I said.

  “FinCEN operates out of the U.S. Treasury Department. It’s their job to generate data on suspicious financial transactions, including cash deposits of ten thousand dollars or more, and pass it on to the appropriate law enforcement agencies. It’s how we detect money laundering and such.”

  “I knew somebody did that.”

  “Now you know who. It turned out that a lieutenant colonel in the Army National Guard out of Alabama deposited forty thousand dollars in cash into his checking account the day after he returned from Iraq. He had carried it home in a duffel bag. It was the same lieutenant colonel who was supposed to have been monitoring the contract with CB Enterprises. He turned a blind eye to what CBE was doing in exchange for the cash and an all-expense-paid vacation to Thailand. He confessed to all this about five minutes after our guys knocked on his door. He is now an ex-lieutenant colonel doing time in Talladega on fraud charges.”

  “He was the one who put us onto David Maurell,” Cooper said. “The colonel said Maurell was introduced to him as the company’s CFO, yet it was clear to him that he ran the show, that Baird was just a figurehead. The colonel thought it was arranged that way because Maurell was of Cuban descent and the U.S. Army preferred to work with true-blue white Anglo-Saxon Protestant Americans. Anyway, according to the colonel, Maurell disappeared before Baird did—along with all of Uncle’s Sam’s money. Baird had no idea where Maurell had gone. So when he ran, he ran alone.”

  “It was Maurell who engineered everything,” Marin said. “Unfortunately, the DOJ knows nothing about him. The man’s a ghost. No valid passport, no Social Security number—we were able to trace him only as far back as Laredo. That’s where his trail evaporated. We’ve been hoping to grab Baird so he could fill in the blanks.

  “Two and a half years, McKenzie,” Marin added. “Over two and a half years the DOJ has been working this case one way or another and we’ve been getting nowhere—until we heard that you were coming down to Galena.”

  “Wait, wait, wait,” I said. “You have a tap on Chief Hasselback’s phone?”

  “Of course not,” Cooper said. “What do you take us for?”

  “We have a tap on Mrs. Baird’s phone,” Marin said. “We’re watching everyone who had ever known Baird; you can’t possibly be surprised by that.”

  “No, I guess I’m not.”

  “When the chief called Mrs. Baird to tell her that you were coming down to talk about Maurell and her son’s disappearance, we felt we should listen, too. We didn’t know Baird was in Galena, either. We figure he must have slipped into town sometime Saturday night after the chief called his mother.”

  “Or Sunday,” Cooper said. “While we were watching you.”

  So it wasn’t just your imagination, my inner voice suggested. You really were being followed.

  “Now it’s your turn,” Cooper told me.

  I started with Jax Abana and the Nine-Thirty-Seven Mexican Mafia, filling in the blanks as I went.

  “The two of them never did run to Mexico,” I said. “Baird must have crossed the border just to see what was what. The fact the Laredo PD found his car—if they had gone into the shopping mall, they might have found him, too. Meanwhile, Maurell used the money he stole from the Nine-Thirty-Seven as seed to create his fake corporation, and after a few years he found a way to sneak into Iraq to make his play.”

  “Where is he now?” Marin asked.

  “Somewhere in Minnesota, I’m guessing, living under the name Juan Carlos Navarre.”

  “Why would he go back to Minnesota?” Marin asked.

  “There’s a girl named Riley Brodin. She was in the class he audited at Macalester College seven years ago. He went back to Minnesota for her.”

  “That’s crazy,” Cooper said.

  “I’ve known men who have done crazier things for a woman,” Marin said.

  “Anyway, Navarre or Maurell or whoever he is is still in Minnesota. I know it.” I pointed at Cooper. “So is Collin Baird. He wants his share of the loot. He wants his revenge, too, and he’ll do anything to get them.”

  “Okay,” said Marin. “We’re going to Minnesota. We’re going tonight. Give me the name of your contact.”

  “Lieutenant Pelzer, Hennepin County Sheriff’s Department.”

  “This isn’t just about Maurell and Baird, McKenzie. It’s also about the money. We want it back. I don’t suppose you know where it is.”

  “Try the Lake Minnetonka Community Bank,” I said.

  * * *

  Shortly after the agents left, I went to the closed bathroom door and knocked.

  “Are they gone?” Nina asked.

  “Yes. Can I come in?”

  “No.”

  “Okay.”

  I slid to the floor and sat with my back against the door frame.

  “What are you doing?” she asked.

  “Just sitting here feeling sorry that I involved you in all of this.”

  “It’s what I wanted, isn’t it?”

  “No, what you wanted was the fun and games, and I had hoped to give them to you. What happened with Mrs. Baird, that should never have happened.”

  I heard the splashing of water, but no words. Finally Nina asked, “What did the Department of Justice want?”

  “Information. Turns out that Jax Abana alias David Maurell alias Juan Carlos Navarre scammed the army out of forty-nine million bucks in Iraq a couple of years ago.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “Now we know where he got his money.”

  My cell phone started playing “Summertime.”

  “Just a sec,” I said and answered it.

  “McKenzie,” Greg Schroeder said, “where are you?”

  “Galena, Illinois.”

  “Why?”

  “What do you want, Greg?”

  “Old man Muehlenhaus is going crazy. So crazy that he said to call you.”

  “What’s happened?”

  “Riley Brodin is missing.”

  “Define missing.”

  “I lost her, or rather I should say she lost me.”

  “Butterfingers.”

  “She received a phone call. Said it was from her BFF Mary Pat Mulally. Next time I looked, she was gone.”

  “Have you spoken to Mulally?”

  “She says she hasn’t heard from Riley for two days.”

  “Navarre,” I said. “He finally contacted her.”

  “That’s my guess.”

  “Did the old man call the county sheriff?”

  “To tell him what? That his sound-of-mind twenty-five-year-old granddaughter has voluntarily run off with the multimillionaire Spanish entrepreneur she’s
been sleeping with?”

  “Greg, this is way more complicated than either of us thought.”

  I gave him the Reader’s Digest Condensed Books version of my Monday so far.

  “Christ,” he said. “I gotta go.”

  “Call Lieutenant Pelzer,” I said.

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah…”

  After he hung up, Nina called to me. “What’s going on?”

  “Riley Brodin is missing. They think she ran off with Navarre.”

  I heard the water splash as Nina got out of the tub. A moment later she opened the door. She had pulled on a white cotton shift without bothering to dry off. It clung to her body and in some areas seemed almost transparent, revealing to me all the things it was meant to conceal.

  “We have to go home,” she said.

  “It’s two hundred and eighty miles. Even if we take Highway 52 instead of 61, it’s still a five-hour trip.”

  “We can take turns driving.”

  “No. It’s too late. You lost a lot of blood and you’re tired. So am I. Tomorrow morning will be better.”

  Nina slid to the floor next to me, her back against the opposite doorjamb. I changed positions so I could reach out and stroke her calf beneath the hem of her shift.

  “I’m worried,” she said.

  “Me, too.”

  “You have a way of dealing with it, though—emotionally, I mean. You don’t panic. You don’t waste time or energy.”

  “I practice a lot when I’m alone.”

  “That’s why you left me this morning. After Baird pistol-whipped me. I’m sitting on the floor, bleeding all over the place. You took one look and left me. Didn’t even hesitate. You were off to get Baird.”

  I removed my hand from her leg.

  “I knew you were going to be all right,” I said. “I’m sorry if it seemed as if I didn’t care.”

  “Put your hand back.”

  I did.

  “I’m not complaining, McKenzie. I’m just saying, I couldn’t have done that. I see everything as a whole and how it affects me personally. You break it down into component parts and never let any of it bother you. That’s why you can do this and I can’t.”

  “I don’t know, sweetie. The way you took on Special Agent Matthew Cooper of the U.S. Department of Justice…”

  “I was tired and I was angry and I was scared and—”

  “I will remember it always with great pleasure.”

  “Stop it.”

  “Wait until I tell Bobby,” I said. “Harry and Chopper and all the other guys, too.”

  “They’ll think I’m a jerk.”

  “No, honey, they think I’m a jerk. They adore you. My friends have always liked you more than they’ve liked me. It’s something I’ve learned to live with.”

  “You’re joking.”

  “I’m really not. Come on, now. Get up. Take this off.”

  “I need to tell you, McKenzie, if you’re thinking what I think you’re thinking…”

  “I’m thinking we need to dry you off and wrap you in a blanket and sit in front of the fire and cuddle.”

  “Cuddle? Oh my God, what’s happening?”

  “Do you have any wine left?”

  “Yes, but I dropped the bottle in the tub. It’s half bathwater.”

  “That’s okay. I have plenty of root beer.”

  “The perfect end to a perfect day.”

  SEVENTEEN

  Connie Evingson was my favorite jazz diva after Ella, Sarah, Billie, Etta, and maybe Shirley, and she was singing “The Girl from Ipanema” from the CD player as the Lexus crossed into Minnesota. So many lesser talents have covered the song over the decades that it has been transformed into the blandest of elevator music clichés. Yet she somehow managed to infuse it with the same sensuality, melancholy, and longing that could be heard in the original 1964 recording by Antônio Carlos Jobim, Astrud Gilberto, and Stan Getz. Which is why I was miffed when my cell phone interrupted the song.

  I answered it the way I always do. “McKenzie.”

  “McKenzie,” Victoria said in reply.

  “Hey, sweetie.”

  Nina mouthed, “Who is it?” and I told her.

  “Put it on speakerphone.”

  I did, raising my voice so I could be easily heard over the traffic. “What’s going on, Vic?”

  “I found him,” she said.

  “Found who?”

  “Juan Carlos Navarre, who do you think?”

  “What do you mean, you found him?”

  Nina leaned forward as she listened to the conversation.

  “Remember,” Victoria said, “you told me to see if I could find out who shot up the kidnappers that grabbed whoever it was that Felipe Navarre paid ransom for that one time?”

  “Vaguely,” I said.

  “They were killed in ambush by the Guardia Civil. It’s Spain’s military-style police force, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “While looking for that, though, I found something else. What do they call that? There’s a word…”

  “Serendipity,” Nina said.

  “Oh, hi, Nina.”

  “Hi. How’s your parents?”

  “Better, now that Mom’s cutting me some slack.”

  “Victoria,” I said.

  “Oh, yeah. Serendipitously, I found an article printed seven years ago in El Mundo, El Mundo del Siglo Veintiuno—The World of the Twenty-first Century. Anyway, these guys are like Sixty Minutes; they have a reputation for investigative reporting. One of their more frequent targets is the Guardia Civil. They busted the commander for embezzling, among other things.

  “About nine years ago, El Mundo printed a story that accused members of the Guardia Civil of acting as mercenaries in the employ of Felipe Navarre, who, it claimed, had paid them a reward for hunting down and killing the ETA guys that supposedly kidnapped his son—Juan Carlos Navarre.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “No, no, no—now listen. According to El Mundo, it was all one big giant hoax. The ETA had nothing to do with the kidnapping. Instead, the paper claimed that Juan Carlos had staged the kidnapping to rip off the old man, and the old man used the Guardia Civil to kill the co-conspirators.”

  “You’re kidding,” I repeated.

  “I’m really not.”

  “What happened to Juan Carlos?”

  Nina was listening so intently that she moved across the seat, straining against her shoulder harness.

  “He disappeared,” Victoria said. “The paper said that Felipe disowned Juan Carlos when he learned the truth about the kidnapping. Cut him off, cut him out—never spoke about him after that; wouldn’t even acknowledge that he had a son. There was speculation—at least a columnist at El Mundo speculated—that Felipe might have had his son killed, too. I don’t believe it, though.”

  “Why not?”

  “The ransom money was never recovered. I think Juan Carlos took the cash and ran like hell and Felipe let him. Just let him go.”

  “How much was the ransom?”

  “Ten million euros.”

  “How much is that in real money?”

  “I looked it up—just over thirteen million dollars. McKenzie, what if he came to America?”

  “Victoria—please tell me that you have a photograph.”

  “I’m sorry, I don’t.”

  “Find one.”

  “You already owe me one hundred dollars.”

  “Find a photograph and I’ll pay your college tuition.”

  “Whoa, Harvard, here I come.”

  Nina leaned back in her seat after Victoria hung up. She smiled brightly.

  “There might be a happy ending after all,” she said.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “For Riley and Juan Carlos.”

  “No.”

  “Why not? If he really is Juan Carlos…”

  “He’s not.”

  “If he really is…”

  “Not a chance. Nina, the man who’s stalkin
g Riley—”

  “Stalking?”

  “He rented the house across the bay so he could stare at the purple flag at the end of her dock through a telescope, for God’s sake. He’s not Juan Carlos Navarre, the real Juan Carlos Navarre. He can’t be. He has to be Jax Abana. I showed his photograph to his mother, to his sister, to Collin Baird’s mother, to two of his former lovers, to Cesar Nunez, to the police detective who worked the case—they all identified him. Jax Abana.”

  “They identified a man they hadn’t seen in seven, eight years from an image on a cell phone.” Nina pointed her finger at me. “You told them what to expect before they actually saw the picture.”

  “That’s not entirely true.”

  “Confirmation bias, I think they call it—you see what you expect to see, what you want to see. You also told me that what’sisname, the detective, Ihns—he said that Abana looked different back then. He had a mustache.”

  “So what?”

  “He doesn’t now. McKenzie, you’re the one who’s told me many times that eyewitness testimony is notoriously unreliable.”

  “His mother would know who he is, his sister would know, don’t you think?”

  “Maybe Navarre looks just like Abana. Maybe they’re doppelgängers.”

  “Impossible.”

  Nina cleared her throat and gave her voice a professorial tone. “When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth,” she said.

  “You’re quoting Sherlock Holmes now? Nina, there is no doubt in my mind that Jax Abana alias David Maurell is pretending to be Juan Carlos Navarre. I believed it when I was sure there was no such person. Now that I know there is, I believe it even more. The only question is—what happened to the real Juan Carlos?”