BLACK in the Box

by Russell Blake

  “Why not?”

  “He changed while I was with him.”

  “So you conspired to murder him with Brent?”

  “I didn’t do that!” Nancy insisted.

  McCarthy frowned. “We pulled your cell phone records – and Brent’s. What do you think they show?”

  Her shoulders fell. “Okay. Here’s the truth. I was seeing Brent. He and I…Alec didn’t know. That’s why I was going to call off the wedding and I didn’t announce it to anyone.”

  McCarthy nodded. “Go on.”

  “Alec could get real violent. He was high-strung. I was afraid he’d go berserk if he found out about me and Brent.”

  “Fascinating, but it doesn’t explain why you gave him a fake alibi.”

  “He told me that he was over by the registers, but that he was afraid you’d make him a suspect if he told you, because nobody was around.”

  “Worked out nicely for you, too, because it took the heat off so you could pretend to be the grieving fiancée.”

  “I’m not proud of what I did. But that’s the explanation.”

  McCarthy shook his head. “I don’t think so. What were you and Brent into with Alec? This is your one chance to tell me the truth, Nancy. We’ll find out eventually. People don’t murder each other because they’re scared of breaking the news they’re two-timing someone. But they do for a lot of other reasons I can think of. Usually money or drugs.”

  They sat staring at each other as seconds dragged by. Nancy started crying, but McCarthy didn’t offer her a tissue. He’d seen the easy tears she’d shed the night before, and he wasn’t about to extend a moment’s pity for a practiced liar like her.

  “It wasn’t drugs. I swear. But I know who’s dealing in the store,” she said, a flash of slyness lighting her swollen eyes.

  “I couldn’t give a shit, Nancy. You may think you’ve got a bargaining chip there, but you’re mistaken. You don’t. The only thing that will work is the truth – and it seems like that’s as foreign to you as Swahili.”

  “It’s Henry Heung. He was selling meth to Alec. Brent was helping him deal.”

  “Brent sounds like a real charmer. So you’re saying this is all about drugs? How much weight are we talking? Was Alec dealing?”

  “Oh, no. Nothing like that. He was using, not selling.”

  “The violent dope fiend gives you a ring, you’re afraid to say no, and so your boyfriend kills him. Is that how it went down? One less problem?”

  She stared off into space and then shook her head slowly. “No. You’ve got it all wrong. Alec was skimming credit cards, had a deal where Bethany sold them and they split the money. He spent his on meth.”

  “Bethany, huh?” McCarthy made a note.

  “Yes, and that’s why I thought she might have killed him. But I must have been wrong. There’s no other reason Brent would freak like he did and start shooting. He must have killed Alec.”

  “Because of your little love triangle?”

  “No.” She sighed and wiped away a tear. “To understand it, you need to go back to the war. You need to go to Iraq.”

  “Iraq?” McCarthy blurted, surprised.

  “He was stationed outside of Bagdad. While he was there, he became friends with one of the covert ops guys who stumbled upon a bunch of hidden Iraqi gold from Saddam’s time. Like fifty million dollars’ worth. But he got killed on the final day he was going to remove it.”

  McCarthy and Trout looked at each other in disbelief.

  “Anyway, Alec was going to go back and find it. But it would cost a ton of money. Fifty grand. He didn’t have that kind of cash, so he approached Brent, Henry, and Mary, as well as me. We each agreed to do whatever it would take to come up with ten grand apiece.”

  “To go to Iraq,” McCarthy said.

  “Exactly. He needed to pay off some of the locals so he could mount an expedition and get the gold out without being attacked. And that would cost.”

  “So this is all about Iraqi gold. And Alec needed money, so he enlisted a who’s who of small-time chiselers.”

  “I’m not a chiseler.”

  “No, you’re the fiancée who didn’t tell him you were banging another guy because you were afraid it would queer your gold deal. Is that a little closer to the truth?” McCarthy asked.

  “Think whatever you want. I told you – he scared me. He was nuts.”

  “Right. But it also must have occurred to you that if you told him the truth, rejected his proposal, he’d have cut you out.”

  “Maybe there was some of that.”

  “Why is the messenger bag important?”

  “Alec was like a total security freak. Paranoid like nothing you can imagine. He had all kinds of special encryption on his files, and he kept the key to them in his bag.”

  “So you and Brent decided to cut Alec out.”

  “No. If Brent did that, it was all on him. I never said to kill anyone.”

  “Uh-huh. Where did Brent come up with ten grand? Or you, for that matter?”

  “We borrowed it from Henry. He always had a ton of cash.”

  The questioning continued for another hour, and when McCarthy and Trout left the room, the younger man stopped in the hall.

  “What do you think? Is she even close to telling the truth, or is it all BS?”

  “Hard to tell. She’s cold-blooded and lies like a Hanoi streetwalker. On the other hand, she’s not smart enough to make all this up.” McCarthy shrugged. “Let’s give her a few minutes to wonder whether she’s conned us, and then hit her again. This time you be bad cop. I’ll watch.”

  Chapter 56

  Bethany started awake on the hard steel prison bench, each beat of her heart sending spikes of pain through her splitting skull. She’d had hangovers before, but this one was of truly epic intensity, and she failed to contain a low moan as she opened her eyes.

  The sound that had awakened her came again – the dull clunk of a truncheon against the bars. Bethany swung her gaze to the cell entrance, where two female guards who looked as friendly as gladiators stood eyeing her.

  “All right, princess. Rise and shine. Time to get ready for your arraignment,” the larger of the pair said. The two women next to Bethany chuckled, and one let out an “oooh.”

  Bethany struggled to stand, her legs momentarily unwilling to obey her. When she finally managed, she felt like she’d been dragged behind a tractor for a mile. She glanced around the cell with relief – Angie had been removed a few minutes after threatening Bethany, which one of the women had whispered was because the cell was bugged. Bethany didn’t know whether she was kidding, and she didn’t care. All that mattered was that the immediate threat of violence had been hauled off kicking and screaming, leaving the cell in relative peace for the rest of the night.

  She moved to the entrance and one of the guards instructed her to stand facing the wall, hands behind her. Bethany obeyed and soon was being herded down the corridor.

  “I made a call last night. Has anyone come by to see me?” Bethany asked, and hated the way her voice cracked at the end of the question.

  “Not yet, baby doll.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “Over to the courthouse. Today’s your big day.”

  A few hours ago she’d been questioned at length by a grumpy, disheveled detective, and she’d confessed that she’d been sleeping with Larry, had gotten drunk at his house, trashed it, and then misguidedly hit the road. Now the entire episode seemed surreal, but at the time she’d been spilling her guts it had seemed important to tell the whole truth. The detective had seemed unimpressed by her story of tainted love, and had filled out a form and instructed the guards to take her back to the drunk tank while she waited for formal charges to be filed.

  Bethany had finally placed a call to her last resort and left a lengthy, rambling message on his voice mail. That had been at six a.m.; her watch told her it was now nine. If he hadn’t appeared yet, it was going to get ugly – she wasn’t sure how
much sway he’d have once she was in the court system.

  They reached the processing area, and her stomach flipped when she saw him across the room, looking hard and official in his dark suit and cheap tie. He was in the middle of a discussion with an older uniformed cop, and when she emerged from the back, they both looked at her, the cop with an expression of disgust and her contact’s face neutral, as always.

  “I’ll take it from here, Sergeant,” her contact said, and the officer nodded.

  “You gotta sign for her. We have procedures.”

  “Of course. But I trust you understand that due to the sensitivity of the matter, you’re to send all copies of the processing paperwork as well as the arrest report to my office. Is that clear?”

  The sergeant scowled and glowered at her. “Yes. I understand. I don’t want no beef with the feds. But you should have seen her blood alcohol level. She could have killed someone, or herself. It’s a miracle she didn’t.”

  “I got that the first time, Sergeant. Thanks for all your help. Just show me what I need to sign.”

  The paperwork shuffle took five minutes. Nobody paid any further attention to Bethany, who was left standing by the cell block entrance while her new custodian signed her out. Once he was done, he approached her and noticed her cuffs. He turned to the sergeant. “Can we get the bracelets off?”

  “If you think you can handle her,” the older man said. When Bethany’s savior didn’t respond, the cop neared and unlocked her cuffs. “There you go. I never want to see you here again, you got that? If I do, you’ll regret the day you were born, and nobody, not even he, will be able to save you,” he warned.

  Bethany lowered her eyes and nodded. She understood perfectly. “You won’t. This was a onetime experience.”

  The cop turned back to Bethany’s new escort and tossed him a bag with her things in it. “Get her out of my sight.”

  “Come on,” the man said, and strode across the room, tailed by Bethany.

  She noticed, as she had at all her meetings with Rogers, that his shoes were shined to a mirror gleam. Rogers was an FBI agent, what rank she wasn’t sure, but he obviously commanded a lot of clout. He didn’t say anything until they were outside. She squinted against the bright sunlight, and Rogers handed her the bag. She fished out a pair of sunglasses and slid them over her eyes, and they continued to his vehicle.

  “Where’s my car?” she asked, her voice as shaky as her legs.

  “In the impound lot. One thing at a time.”

  Rogers was driving an anonymous Ford sedan, and she slipped into the passenger seat as he rounded the hood and opened the driver’s door. She waited until he was seated and the engine running before turning to him.

  “I’m so sorry I had to call you.”

  “You’re lucky I was in town.”

  “Crap. I didn’t even think about that.”

  “You didn’t do a whole lot of thinking at all last night, did you?”

  Her lips thinned to a line and she shook her head slowly. He put the transmission in reverse and backed out of the space before speaking.

  “All right. I’m going to scrub any record of your arrest, but we’re going to have it in our files, and we can reactivate it and press charges if you screw us. That’s the first thing. The second is that I just got a call – the card skimming gear was discovered, so that phase of the operation is dead. From now on we’ll supply you with credit card data so you can keep the Russian on the hook.”

  Rogers had recruited Bethany as a snitch three months earlier in a sting operation when she was buying drugs from her neighbor. They’d identified her before as a frequent visitor to the Russian, and had made her an offer she couldn’t refuse: work for the FBI and help them gather enough to shut down the mob cell for good, or go to jail for a long, long time – her prints were all over the disks and flash drives she’d passed on to Rudi, so she had no real choice. She knew it put her in serious jeopardy, but at the same time, it wasn’t like she could run, so she had to do what was necessary to keep Rogers happy.

  “They got everything?”

  “We’re doing damage control as we speak. It’ll never make the papers – you don’t have to worry. As far as Rudi is concerned, we only need a few more meetings to identify everyone else in the ring. So play nice with him for now, and soon this will all be over.”

  “Won’t his people want to get me?”

  Rogers shook his head. “You’re a pawn, nothing more. The rest of his gang doesn’t even know you exist. You’re just a tool they use to get what they want.”

  “There’s a lot of that going on.” She stared out the window. “Are we going to the yard?”

  “That’s the next stop.”

  “I saw him yesterday. He said he didn’t want to buy any more data until things cooled down.”

  “We know. But after a week or two goes by, he’ll get complacent again. Nothing in the papers, life goes back to normal. You tell him you’re running the skimming gear now, that you know how to do it, so the arrangement’s the same.”

  “You think he’ll go for that?”

  Rogers looked pointedly at her skimpy top and smooth, tanned skin. “Convince him.”

  She nodded mutely.

  Rogers’ gaze returned to the road. “There’s another matter that was more concerning, though, but it looks like you dodged that bullet. Up until a few hours ago, you were the number one suspect for your buddy Alec’s murder. They were going to charge you this morning, but they’ve had a change of heart.”

  “Me? Why me?”

  “Something about being found with the murder weapon in your hand.”

  “But I didn’t kill him!”

  “While it’s refreshing to hear a murder suspect insist they didn’t do it, I’m afraid that’s not unknown.”

  “What happened to change their mind?”

  “They nailed the murderer. Or at least, they think they did.”

  “Really? Who was it?”

  “Guy named Brent. Or possibly the security guard – Henry.”

  “They don’t know which?”

  “Not definitively. Henry’s vanished. And Brent’s dead.”

  “Dead! How?”

  “He shot at the wrong guy.”

  They drove in silence until they reached the yard. When they arrived, Rogers parked and gave her a hard look. “Don’t screw up any more, Bethany. I’m not your bitch, nor is the bureau your get-out-of-jail-free card. We did this because you’re still useful, no other reason. Next time, you’re on your own. You aren’t that valuable.”

  “I won’t. I promise.” And for once, Bethany wasn’t trying to calculate an edge. She could tell Rogers meant it; and she did too.

  For now.

  In the meantime, she had another project planned: extracting a small fortune from Larry. She’d go to work on it after she got some sleep and had a few bong loads.

  But the prick was dead meat, and he’d pay through the nose for underestimating her.

  Chapter 57

  One day later, Los Angeles, California

  Larry entered the darkened dining room of one of Beverly Hills’ most exclusive restaurants, which was closed until evening, when a who’s who of glittering starlets and powerful moguls would dine on wildly overpriced delicacies in a decadent celebration of all things excessive. He followed a man in a nondescript suit whose knuckles threatened to drag on the imported marble at any moment.

  Four men sat at one of the tables in the back of the room. All were middle-aged, obese, and had cocktails on the table in front of them. Larry nodded to them, and the one closest to him motioned to a chair. “Larry, take a seat. We were just talking about you.”

  “Hell of a thing, huh?” Larry said as he sat.

  The speaker, Gino Loretti, gave a small shrug and reached for a silver bowl of mixed nuts. “Yeah. Them’s the breaks. Shit happens. You roll with it.”

  One of the others, Tommy Caprese, sat forward and stared at Larry with eyes the color of lead.
“Little bird told me the cops found a bunch of skag in your place, Larry. What kinda operation you running outta there? Got some sidelines you didn’t want to share with your partners?”

  Larry blanched. “I had no idea. It was some sort of Asian drug ring, near as we can tell. Two of the men disappeared yesterday – both Chinese.”

  Caprese nodded. “Between the killings and the dope, we gotta shut down our racket. Lotta people are pissed off about that, Larry. A lot.”

  “It’s not my fault.”

  “Yeah, I know. Like I said, I don’t take it personal. Besides, we got another angle we can work. Bigger.”

  “Really? What?”

  “You’re going to go public, Larry.”

  Larry tilted his head. “Public?”

  “That’s right. Big expansion plans, going to do leveraged buyouts and roll-ups of promising locations, the whole nine yards.”

  “I…I don’t know much about that, guys.”

  “Don’t worry. You’re just a pretty face. I got a crew flying out who do this. They’ll handle everything. Sanitize your books, make you look legit, the works.”

  “What’s the racket?”

  “You raise a ton of cash in your initial public offering, which my buds take out to the street and make a big cut of the profit for their time. Then they talk you up like you’re the next Walmart, and get a buncha dimwits to buy the stock for more, more, more. We sell ’em tons of it, and then we short it so when it crashes and burns, we make out like bandits.”

  “But…how do I make out if it craters?”

  “You? You’re lucky you aren’t going swimming with an engine block strapped to your chest.”

  “Will I get some stock?”

  “Of course. How would it look if the glorious leader didn’t get a big chunk?”

  “Then I can sell it while it’s going up and make money that way.”

  Loretti shook his head. “No. You’ll be locked up. Can’t sell for a year or two. Doesn’t matter, by that time it’ll be toilet paper.” Loretti took a sip of his highball. “We’ll set you up with a bank. You’ll borrow lots of money. It’ll vanish. Some of your product will disappear off the loading dock every week. By the time the dust settles, the stores will be history.” Loretti looked over his glass at Larry. “And you’ll have learned not to get too big for your britches.”