Midas

by Russell Andrews

  As a kind of subset of that suit, Justin had asked Reggie to put together information on the Saudi royal family. His dad had practically blown a gasket talking about the Saudi role in U.S. energy policy, and Justin knew enough to know that Saudis were never far away when it came to any kind of terrorist acts. He didn’t know if those connections would apply now, but the links couldn’t be ignored. If they were there, he wanted to know what the possibilities were. In Reggie’s list of information about the Save the Earth suit, she’d included the fact that there was a specific request to subpoena Mishari al Rahman, a Saudi royal, as someone who might have information about Dandridge’s conference. Mishari, a longtime friend and business associate of Dandridge, was supposed to be representing the entire royal Saudi clan. In particular, the suit was claiming that the White House, in conjunction with the Saudis, was manipulating oil prices. The intent, the suit said, was to bring the cost way down before the next presidential election, using the ensuing economic advantage as a further boon to Phillip Dandridge’s campaign. The main argument against this allegation was that oil prices weren’t going down. They were rising like crazy, and until the bombing attacks, that fact had unquestionably been hurting Dandridge’s campaign.

  There were several pages related to the lawsuit New York City had filed against EGenco. The suit was complicated and detailed and Reggie had done her best to simplify things, but there were gaps that Justin wasn’t quite able to bridge. The gist of the suit was that New York had pension fund money—firemen’s and police pension money in addition to that of many other city employees—invested in EGenco. The suit charged that EGenco was violating federal law by doing business with countries that supported state-sponsored terrorism. Justin couldn’t follow every step, but the suit traced over a trail of shell companies that existed only to launder money and circumvent the law. The suit emphasized the fact that post-9/11, the city couldn’t allow its money to be invested in countries and businesses that were responsible or supportive of that attack.

  The third major area that Reggie had done her best to condense was the Justice Department’s investigation into EGenco’s business practices, stemming from the financial improprieties that Roger Mallone had explained.

  By eight-thirty that night, the living room was even messier, Reggie was chomping on her third piece of pizza from the pie she’d gone out to pick up at the Italian place on Main Street, and Justin had to turn away from his computer screen and say to her, “Okay, enough. I have to stop.”

  “What have you put together?” Reggie asked.

  He shook his head. “In some ways too much, in some ways not enough.”

  “You want to talk it out?”

  “I don’t know if I can even make sense of it. I can see the threads, see some of the corruption, I can even see where people are making a shitload of money they shouldn’t be making, but Christ, tying it in to the bombings and the plane crash . . . it’s inconceivable.”

  “The bombings, Jay? I thought you were just looking at the crash.”

  “It’s all tied together, Reggie. I can’t prove it, but I know it.”

  “Maybe the McDonald’s thing, I know you think it was all meant to kill the Cooke woman, but come on, Harper’s and La Cucina?”

  “I know. I know. It’s crazy. But . . .”

  “Talk.”

  “Okay, look. Bradford Collins is the head of EGenco. The company’s under investigation by the Justice Department for huge, mind-boggling financial misconduct.”

  “The misconduct hasn’t been proven yet.”

  “A lot of things haven’t been proven yet. But let’s go with it for a minute. Let’s just say it’s justified, that they’re heavily in debt and they tried to hide it, that they screwed around with pension funds. Let’s just say they’re Enron. I heard a good case made for that. Plus, in a separate suit, they’re being sued for illegal dealings with terrorist-supporting countries.”

  “Nice company.”

  “Yeah, they’re sweethearts. But it’s not hard to see why someone wanted Collins dead.”

  “Why?”

  “Because he was going to talk.”

  “To who?”

  “To the Feds . . . Wait, hold on a second.” He went back to his computer, called up his file on the case. He didn’t find what he was looking for, went on the Net, back to the New York Times site. He went to a story in their files that he’d looked up before, one that had had the names of the people killed in the Harper’s bombing. He scanned the list and the brief bios that went along with them. “Damn!” he said, when he came to what he was looking for. “He wasn’t just going to talk to Justice. He was going to talk to Elliot Brown.”

  “Who’s that?”

  “The New York City comptroller. He was killed in the explosion, too. I’ll bet the house he was one of the people at Collins’s table that day.”

  “All right, so he was going to talk. Who’d want to stop him? I mean, stop him badly enough to kill him.”

  “The Justice Department.”

  “Jay, I’m not following. I thought you said he was talking to the Justice Department.”

  “Yeah. But he was talking to the lower levels. The investigators. It’s a higher level that wanted him to keep quiet.” She waited for him to say more. Finally, he sighed and said, “He was going to blow the whistle on the attorney general. On Stuller.”

  “For what?”

  “I don’t know. I just know he’s involved. Stuller and Dandridge both.”

  “Jesus, Jay.”

  “Yeah.”

  She got up, went to the kitchen, came back with two more beers. When she offered him one, Justin shook his head. “How ’bout we split it?” she said, and he nodded. She took a long sip, offered him the bottle. He took a quick hit and passed it back to her.

  “I just want to get this straight. You think the vice president and the attorney general of the United States have something to do with the three terrorist attacks this month?”

  “Yeah, I do. I don’t know whether they’re involved or they’re covering something up. But they’re connected.”

  “Jay—”

  “It’s why Hutch Cooke was killed. It’s why his plane was rigged. Because he could link things to Dandridge.”

  “You think he knew what was going on?”

  “I don’t know. But even if he didn’t, he could’ve figured it out at some point. If I had to guess, I’d say he already did. But either way, he was a loose end. And these guys definitely don’t like to leave anything loose laying around.”

  “What was Cooke doing? He didn’t fly Collins or Elliot Brown here, did he?”

  “No.”

  “So what’s his connection?”

  “I think he flew whoever’s responsible for the Harper’s bombing.”

  “The guy who killed himself?”

  “No. The guy behind the guy who killed himself.”

  She took this in, stayed quiet while she mulled it over. “Why here?” is what she asked finally. “Why East Hampton or East End Harbor?”

  Justin shook his head. “There has to be a reason. I just can’t connect it. But here’s what I think: that someone from Justice set the meeting up with Collins and Brown and that same person specified the place. Hutch Cooke flew somebody into town and either he made the connection, after the explosion, that he’d flown in the bomber, or whoever he was working for realized that he might figure it out. Once that was in the air, they couldn’t risk having him around anymore.” He stood up, paced back and forth across the living room with quick, hard strides. “I’m close,” he said. “It’s so close, but I can’t put it together.”

  “But you will.”

  His eyes closed with fatigue, he nodded, and murmured, “Yes. I will.”

  When he opened his eyes, Reggie said, “I’ll be right back.”

  “What?”

  “I’d like to go home and get something. Will you wait here?”

  “Where am I gonna go? And what the hell are you goi
ng to get?”

  “Something that’ll make you feel better.”

  “Hard drugs?”

  “Better,” she said.

  He smiled, plunked himself down on the couch. On her way to the door her hand brushed his arm. It was a friendly gesture, a touch of support, but it also sent a sexual charge up and down his spine. That charge kept him frozen where he was for the few minutes it took her to cross the street to her house and then back to his. She didn’t knock when she returned, just opened the door and stood in the doorframe. She didn’t seem to have anything with her and he looked puzzled.

  He could hear the exhaustion in his own voice when he said, “I thought you were bringing something.”

  “I did. Two things, actually.”

  He waited. She reached into her pocket. Pulled out a toothbrush.

  Then she reached into her other pocket. Pulled out a pair of handcuffs.

  Reggie cocked her head and shrugged. He remembered the hunger in her eyes that he’d seen the day before. It was there again, even deeper and more rapacious. Without saying another word or even glancing down at him, she walked past him and headed up the stairs.

  Justin stayed behind for just a moment. He felt the exhaustion rise and leave his body.

  It was replaced by his own hunger, one as powerful as the one he recognized in Reggie. It had been there for quite a while, he knew, but now he realized it had to be sated. And when he realized that, he stood up slowly and, led by the hunger, followed Reggie Bokkenheuser upstairs.

  She was already on the bed when he moved into the bedroom, and she asked him to undress her. She slowly put her arms up into the air and let him pull her shirt up over her head and hands. She had full breasts that seemed to explode out from the restraint of her clothing. She leaned forward and kissed him. Her tongue was thick and filled his mouth. He started to pull away but she didn’t let him. Her tongue stayed inside him, and she slowly pushed him down, climbing on top of him, straddling him, letting her breasts graze over his chest. He reached up and undid her belt buckle, unsnapped her jeans, slowly slid them down her legs. They were firm legs, and shapely. They shifted and he went to pull her boots off, but she shook her head, she wanted to leave them on, so he slid her pants down and over her two-inch heels.

  She turned over, stretched luxuriously across the bed, her movements slow and easy, and he saw that she had a small tattoo of a butterfly on her back, right below her right shoulder, and one of a bird in the small of her back, stretching down to the top of her buttocks. She turned back to him now, the carnivorous expression had spread to her lips, and she wrapped herself around him, enveloping him, practically smothering him, as if they were longtime lovers who’d been apart for months. Her body seemed instantly familiar to him. They fit together well. They couldn’t stop kissing, their tongues exploring, but more than that, also linking and connecting them together.

  Their faces were close together, she was staring straight into his eyes, and she nodded, a sign that he somehow understood. Their lovemaking turned wild and passionate and rough. Rapacious. It was as if the violence that had surrounded them was suddenly brought into their bed. She scratched his back and, in a whisper, told him to pull her hair. She bit down into his shoulder until he had to yank his arm away. She stretched her hands out above her head, running them up the headboard, and he realized she wanted him to grab them, to hold her and pin her as if she were restrained. He hesitated, but she nodded her head and her eyes urgently pleaded with him, so he grabbed both of her wrists with one hand and held tight. She moved her head from side to side and finally he realized she wanted the handcuffs. He was caught up in it now, it was out of his control, he was too excited, so he reached over and cuffed her to the bedpost. She thrashed beneath him but couldn’t escape and he saw the excitement in her eyes. When he entered her, she moaned, and when she came she screamed. And then she shuddered, some kind of cross between agony and ecstasy, and she tried to throw him off her, but he hadn’t come yet, so he moved faster, and faster still, and she was screaming now, and struggling against him, almost as if, suddenly, it didn’t matter who was there with her, she just wanted it over, then he came and she screamed louder, and sobbed, a wracking sob, and then he was off her, exhausted, spent, and she lay, hands stretched back to the headboard, absolutely still, except for her chest, which was heaving up and down, and her eyes, which fluttered open and shut, until they slowly closed and stay closed, unseeing, while her breathing slowed and the violence that had possessed her body quietly disappeared.

  He thought he might have hurt her or overpowered her, and he wasn’t sure what to do or say, but then her eyes opened and she smiled at him, a slow, almost shy smile which he found somehow touching after the wildness he’d just seen and felt in her. She lifted one leg up into the air, almost in slow motion, and now he finally unzipped one boot, then the other, and pulled them both off. Her calves were thick, he ran his hand over the right one. She told him dreamily that she didn’t like her calves, she thought she had football player legs, but he told her that her legs were lovely. He told her her calves were beautiful.

  He went to uncuff her; in the stillness after their lovemaking he felt embarrassed that she was restrained, but she shook her head. He freed her from the bedpost but kept her wrists bound together, and she lifted her arms up over his head and around his back, drawing him to her, forcing him so close he could feel her heart beating against his chest. She was asleep instantly, drained by the outburst of passion and the emotion she’d let loose. He lay there, sweaty, breathing hard, watching her sleep, staring at her smooth, white skin. She had a small mole on her back and he gently touched it. He was glad for the mole because he thought otherwise she’d be perfect.

  He reached up and softly put his palm on Reggie’s neck, leaned over and kissed the top of her head. Then Justin, too, closed his eyes, his arm curled across her back, her face buried into his chest. He drifted into sleep to the rhythm of her soft breaths warming his heart, and he didn’t wake up until he heard a stirring, a footstep on the floorboard, and when his eyes opened, there were four men, expressionless, all with short hair and all with weapons. For a moment he thought it was a dream, a 4 A.M. nightmare, but he could smell their sweat, he could feel their presence, and he began to move, only he couldn’t, because he was tangled together with Reggie, her cuffed hands wrapped around him.

  Her eyes opened then, and when she stirred she saw the men. Justin saw the fear in her eyes, the panic, and she tried to claw herself away from him, but it was no good. One of the men leaned down and hit her. Justin heard the crack of fist against jaw and he saw her go slack. He still couldn’t move, not freely, but now he knew it didn’t make any difference. He was one and he was naked, and they were four and they had guns.

  So all Justin could do was watch in horror and then resignation as one man raised his pistol and shot Reggie Bokkenheuser in the chest. As she toppled sideways, Justin realized he knew one of the men, recognized him, he’d been in Justin’s office. Hubbell Schrader. And it was Schrader who now looked at him, said something in that monotone they all had, all these guys. Justin didn’t hear everything that Schrader said. He just heard the words “FBI” and “enemy combatant,” and Justin started to go, “What the fuck? Enemy combatant?” but the words didn’t come out because he couldn’t speak when he got a look at Reggie, on her side, deadly still, and then Hubbell Schrader turned his gun on Justin, held it at point-blank range, and pulled the trigger.

  All Justin could do was feel the darkness, the shadows that fell over him, then he rolled over, consciousness fading, and something happened that he’d wanted for a long time, for years, ever since Alicia had died, but not now, he thought, he didn’t want it now, not now, not now. But whatever he thought didn’t matter because it had finally happened: he slipped away into the blackness and felt and saw and heard nothing.

  PART THREE

  27

  The air smelled stale.

  The foul odor wafted up his nostri
ls, slid down his throat, and his stomach turned over. He began to gag. That’s when he understood that he was alive. In a cramped place, facedown on a floor, his face shoved down into some grungy carpet-like thing, unable to move much. But alive. His first response was surprise. Then confusion. And then Justin Westwood realized that he didn’t feel elated or even relieved. As his head slowly cleared, as his eyes began to focus, he realized that he felt resigned. Resigned that things hadn’t come to an end. Resigned to the throbbing in his temple and the empty feeling that had long ago replaced his soul. Resigned to the fact that life was going to go on. At least for a little while longer.

  He struggled to turn over on his side, felt his face brush up against something. A new smell overwhelmed him. Leather. He coughed and the force from the movement made his eyes fly open. The smell of leather was coming from a shoe, just inches from his face. He heard the rustling of cloth. His vision was wavy, his senses jumbled, but it seemed like a pant leg moving. Then he heard a drone, a harsh, steady buzz. The light—it seemed to be streaming in from a window—was making him wince, but his eyes stayed open, and Justin thought, I’m on a plane.

  It felt familiar. Looked familiar. His head twisted and he saw something, his brain couldn’t quite take it in, then it clicked: a large fuel tank, like the one he’d seen in the small plane that Hutchinson Cooke had died in. His head turned again and he saw the shoe move. A quick sudden movement. He anticipated the blow a moment before it happened but there was nothing he could do about it. The kick came and the pain in the side of his head was sudden and overwhelming. He had another brief wave of nausea, then there were no more smells, no more sensations, and his eyes were shut and there was only darkness again.