Misgivings

by Donn Cortez

  “And we don’t?”

  “What we know, Eric, is only as much as we’re being allowed to know. But that,” Horatio said, getting to his feet, “is about to change . . .”

  Tripp ran his eye down the guest list and whistled. “Lot of heavy hitters in this crowd. Models, rock stars, actors, lot of local players in the hotel biz . . . doesn’t really sound like the kind of people Kingsley ran with, though. Out of his league, wouldn’t you say?” He passed the list back through the car window.

  Wolfe took it and leaned against the side of Tripp’s car. “I would—which would explain why he’s not on the list. But it’s definitely a league he would have given almost anything to play in.”

  “You figure he was planning to crash it?”

  “I don’t think so—according to the party planner, security’s going to be tight. Nobody gets in without a bar-coded invitation, and we didn’t find one at Kingsley’s apartment.”

  “Maybe that’s what was stolen,” Tripp said. “The place was broken into, but nothing seemed to be missing.”

  “Could be—but that doesn’t help us much. If the killer has one of the invites, it’s not in Patrick’s name; we don’t know whose name is on it, or where Patrick got it in the first place. There’s also no way we can run down everyone on this list before the party tomorrow night, even assuming that whoever gave up the ticket will admit to it.”

  “You’re right about that. Just getting access to some of the people on that list would take most of a day, and if some midlevel gofer scammed one and sold it, we’d never track it down.”

  Wolfe folded the list and slipped it into his jacket pocket. “Well, there’s another possibility. Could be that Patrick found himself another way in; a little less dignified, but still guaranteed to get him in the door—and maybe even help him pay the rent.”

  “Hotel staff, you mean? Well, he wouldn’t be the first actor to put waiter on his résumé.”

  “Which is why I asked you to meet me here, Frank. I’m getting the runaround from hotel management and I was wondering if you’d lend a hand.”

  Tripp grinned. “I see. Need the big dog to do a little barking, huh?”

  “Actually, I was just hoping you’d help me cover a little more ground. Every time I try to pin the manager of the hotel down, he vanishes—I get the feeling he really doesn’t want to talk to me.”

  “We’ll see about that,” Tripp growled, opening his car door.

  The clerk at the front desk, a tiny blond woman with a ponytail, gave Wolfe an open, sunny smile as they approached, a smile Wolfe had analyzed as meaning I can’t help you but I’m going to be really cheerful about it.

  “Did you find him?” she asked. Cheerfully.

  “No, I’m afraid not,” Wolfe said.

  “I can page him again for you—”

  “I’m afraid that’s not gonna do it, sweetheart,” Tripp said. His badge was already out. “We need to talk to your boss, and we need to do it now.”

  Her cheerfulness faltered like a seagull in a high wind, then self-corrected and came back up. “I’m sorry, but there’s really nothing I can do—”

  “Look,” Tripp said in a low voice, “I understand it’s your job to run interference, but he can’t blame you if he doesn’t know it’s your fault. So here’s how it’s going to go: you can tell me where he is and exactly how to get there, and I won’t mention how I found out—or I can make things so unpleasant down here that he’ll be forced to put in an appearance. I don’t think he’d appreciate that much, do you?”

  She blinked at Tripp rapidly, the visual equivalent of a stutter. “Is that a . . . a threat?”

  “I can have six squad cars here, lights going and sirens screaming, in under a minute. And I can make sure they park right in that turnaround out front and stay there, too. How many guests do you want to rethink their travel plans because this part of Miami isn’t quite as safe as they thought it was?”

  She only hesitated for a second, and when she answered her voice was considerably less cheerful. “He’s in the Caesar Room. Third floor, first door on the left when you leave the elevator.”

  “And he’s not going to vanish between now and the time I get there, is he?”

  “No. He’s in a meeting.”

  “Good. Thank you. You have a real nice day.”

  As they walked toward the elevator, Wolfe said, “I’m impressed, Frank. It never occurred to me to just bully it out of her.”

  “Kid, sometimes it’s better to go straight through the fence instead of looking for the gate. Not to mention a lot more satisfying . . .”

  Wolfe rapped on the dark, polished wood of the door to the Caesar Room. A Hispanic woman in her fifties opened it. “Yes?”

  “We’d like to talk to Mister Fergusson, please,” Wolfe said.

  “He’s busy at the moment. Can you come back in half an hour?”

  “No, ma’am, we can’t,” Wolfe said firmly. “Tell him the Miami Police Department would like to have a few words with him—and we’d like to have them now.”

  The woman didn’t seem fazed. She said, “Just a second, please,” and closed the door.

  “Nice try,” Tripp said. “Course, she looked a little harder to intimidate.”

  Before Wolfe could answer, the door opened again. The man who stood there was short and pudgy, with a wide, freckled face and wispy ash-blond hair. He gave them the professional smile of someone in the service industry, without any of the underlying resentment usually simmering just below the surface.

  “Gentlemen,” he said. “I’d be happy to talk to you—would my office be all right?”

  “That’d be fine,” Wolfe said. Fergusson stepped out into the hallway, closing the door behind him, and headed down the hall. Wolfe and Tripp followed him through an unmarked door, which led to a service corridor of considerably less glamour.

  Wolfe was always intrigued by the secret spaces behind what was presented to the public. He could remember as a child being taken to use the restroom in a mall, and somehow getting away from his parents and wandering down a seemingly endless hallway, punctuated by doors with names of stores on them. It was like an entire other world hidden away, the bones and guts and arteries of the mall. It had changed the way he thought; after that, he was always looking for what lay underneath.

  He supposed he still was.

  More than anything, what lay behind the Byzantia’s polished and gleaming exterior reminded him of being backstage at a theater. There was the same complete disregard for appearance, the bare plaster and exposed ductwork and scuffed floors, the harsh fluorescent light and stacks of chairs. Maids pushing carts of laundry, waiters carrying trays, kitchen staff manhandling tall wheeled shelves loaded with produce; everything had the same sort of steady, purposeful pace of people with work to do.

  It was only a shortcut, though—they took a service elevator back down to the main floor, where Fergusson’s office turned out to be just off the lobby itself. Wolfe got the message: This is a place of business, and we’re busy. Don’t take up too much of my time.

  The office was clearly part of the external sheen, as befitted the person who ran the place. A floor-to-ceiling window looked out on South Beach; his desk was large and sculpted out of brushed aluminum, glass, and chunks of raw mahogany. He took a seat behind it and motioned for Wolfe and Tripp to sit as well.

  “Now—what can the Byzantia do for you?” he said pleasantly.

  “Supply us with a list of your employees,” Wolfe said. “And I need to know which ones are going to be working tomorrow night.”

  “May I ask why?”

  Wolfe paused. When he hadn’t spoken for several seconds, Tripp said, “It’s part of an ongoing investigation.”

  “Into what?”

  “We’re—not exactly sure,” Wolfe said. Tripp’s sigh let him know he’d said the wrong thing, but he plunged on anyway. “Our evidence suggests a murder was committed in order to gain access to your Christmas Carnival. We’re conce
rned that it was in preparation for a crime.”

  “What sort of crime?”

  “We don’t know. Yet.”

  Fergusson spread his hands in apparent puzzlement. “So, you have the suggestion of an undefined potential crime. Is that right?”

  “Look, we’re not asking you for much,” Tripp said. “Just a little information. We’ll check it out— quietly—and alert you to any possible problems. Everybody wins.”

  Fergusson considered this for a few seconds. “Let’s say I do. And you discover that one or more of my employees has, I don’t know, a criminal record or something. Can you guarantee this isn’t going to show up on the news?” He stared pointedly at Wolfe.

  Erica Sikes, Wolfe realized. The reporter who shafted me. He’s seen me on television, talking to that— “I can assure you,” Wolfe said, “my days of talking to reporters are over. We’ll be discreet.”

  Fergusson shook his head. “If there was some sort of definite threat to the hotel or my guests, I’d be more than happy to cooperate. But this—it seems to me you’re chasing ghosts.”

  “Maybe,” Wolfe said, “but this particular ghost has already killed one person.”

  “I’m sorry, but I have to think of my employees’ rights as well as the well-being of the people staying at the hotel.”

  “Course you do,” Tripp said. “Lot of your staff is Latino, isn’t it? Hard to tell nationality just by looking—might be Cuban, Cuban-American, Guatemalan, Colombian, Argentinean . . . some of ’em probably immigrated from countries where the police aren’t so polite. Having cops around could make them nervous, right?”

  “Regardless of where they’re from,” Fergusson said, “they still have a right to their privacy.”

  “Depends on who you talk to,” Tripp said. “Wolfe and I, we’re kinda focused on just catching one particular bad guy. We may be fishing, but we’re not interested in small fry. Now, a federal agency—like the INS, for instance—would take a very different approach. They’d just throw out a net and see what they could haul in.”

  Fergusson’s eyes narrowed, but he didn’t reply.

  “So,” Tripp continued, “in the interests of everybody involved, I’d advise you give us that list of employees. We can always go to a judge and get a warrant—but all that’s going to do is make us unhappy, and pretty soon everyone’s unhappy. You don’t want that, do you, Mr. Fergusson?”

  Fergusson stared at Tripp for a moment, then smiled. “No,” he said. “I don’t think anybody wants that . . .”

  16

  HORATIO AND DELKO MET in the conference room.

  “Okay,” Horatio said. He was already seated and waited for Delko to sit down as well. “Let’s see what we have.”

  Delko flipped open the file folder he was carrying. “Khasib Pathan, our kidnapping vic’s father. Citizen of Saudi Arabia and member of the royal family; seventy-third in line for the throne. Started out rich and got a lot richer by making some smart moves in the stock market; he’s a billionaire, in the top hundred of the world’s wealthiest men. He’s got four wives and nine children—seven male, two female. Abdus is the first child of the fourth wife.”

  “Where are the other children?”

  “They’re all back home, working for the family business. The boys went to school here, while the girls never left Saudi Arabia. Abdus was the only one who came to America and decided to stay.”

  “To his parents’ everlasting regret,” Horatio mused. “Or his father’s, anyway. . . . What about his mother?”

  Delko pulled out a laser copy of a photo and handed it over. “Bridgette Pathan.”

  The picture showed an attractive, smiling blonde in her forties. “Maiden name is Annik,” Delko added. “Originally from Stockholm. His other wives are all Saudi.”

  “I see . . . this could explain why Abdus chose a different path from his brothers. Did she have any other children?”

  “None I can find a record for.”

  Horatio nodded. “What about his politics?”

  “This is where it gets interesting, H. Khasib Pathan has been linked to a number of Islamic fundamentalist factions—including those known to have committed acts of terrorism.”

  “Now that is interesting. It may also explain why an Iraqi mine was used in a Miami nightclub.”

  Delko shook his head. “I don’t get it. If this guy is funding terrorists, why is the FBI falling all over themselves trying to help him?”

  “Politics makes for strange bedfellows, Eric. And sometimes, for blackmail.”

  “You think this might be part of an internal power struggle? Like one Mafia family kidnapping the member of another?”

  “Possibly. If so, the State Department almost certainly has a vested interest in who comes out on top.”

  Delko tossed the file folder onto the table. “You know, I’m starting to feel a little out of my depth here. Billionaire royal families, international terrorism . . . didn’t this case start out in a convenience store?”

  “It doesn’t matter, Eric,” Horatio said, getting up from his seat. “We go where the evidence leads us. We’ve dealt with foreign nationals and billionaires before—drug money or oil money, it makes no difference. The person to keep in mind isn’t Khasib Pathan—it’s Talwinder Jhohal.”

  “The owner of the convenience store,” Delko said. “The guy who got attacked.”

  “Yes. A hardworking citizen of Miami that deserves justice just as much as someone living in a mansion on Fisher Island. Let’s not forget about him—or any of the victims of that bomb.”

  “I’m not ready to quit, H—I’m just not sure where we go from here.”

  “We go back to the beginning, Eric. To the initial assault that started this chain of events. Technically, it’s a separate case . . .”

  “Which means we still have jurisdiction,” Delko finished, a smile appearing on his face.

  “And all the evidence we collected. Which we will go over again, side by side with what we have from the kidnapping, and look for connections.”

  Delko grabbed the folder from the table and stood. “Well,” he said. “What are we waiting for?”

  * * *

  The reality show Sudden Success had taken over the entire top floor of the Byzantia. Wolfe and Tripp had to dodge a burly man in a baseball cap hauling a cart full of lighting equipment and a woman pushing a wheeled rack full of clothing before they got to the door of the penthouse suite, an elaborately carved slab of blond wood with inlaid mother-of-pearl trim.

  The door was opened by a harried-looking woman in a red baseball cap, baggy black shorts, and a loose-fitting T-shirt with a picture of Marilyn Monroe on it. She had a hands-free headset on and was already in the middle of a conversation.

  “No, no, they say they’ll edit that later—Hi, come on in—yes, that’s exactly what I want—just have a seat, someone’ll be right with you—I don’t care if the guy in wardrobe hates you, we need it for segment seven—have some fruit or coffee, there’s plenty—no, not you, I’m talking to someone else—what, you think I’d call you that? Honey, if I wanted to insult you I’d be a lot more original . . .”

  The suite was large, the view amazing, the furnishings extremely expensive. It was also half-filled with lights on stands, camera equipment, empty foam-lined AV crates, and loops of cable. Production assistants came and went, ferrying coffee or duct tape or clipboards, and in the middle of it all stood a young woman in a cocktail dress. She was tall and beautiful, with long, dark hair that fell in waves halfway down her back. The dress was made of some sheer, slightly iridescent fabric, its color a deep, rich blue. It was cut low in the front and even lower in the back and slit from ankle to hip. The woman was holding perfectly still while another woman, dressed in jeans and a plaid shirt, dusted her cheekbones with a makeup brush.

  The woman who had let them in had wandered away, still talking to her cell phone. Wolfe wondered whom he should talk to; there was no one obviously in charge.

  “Where shou
ld we start?” Tripp asked.

  “Pick the biggest visible target and go from there.” Wolfe headed straight for the woman in the cocktail dress.

  Up close, she was even more lovely. Her eyes were dark, her lips red and full, her teeth a sparkling white.

  Wolfe made eye contact and smiled. “Hi. You must be the star of the show.”

  She gave his smile back, with interest. “I guess. Are you from the network? Madeline said they were sending somebody over today.”

  “No. I’m—”

  “—not anyone you need to concern yourself with,” a voice said briskly from behind Wolfe.

  He turned. The man who’d spoken was broad-shouldered, with long, unkempt salt-and-pepper hair. He wore a khaki vest with too many pockets and a stern expression on his face.

  “Anitra has too much on her mind already. I’m Jeff Walderson, the director. Let’s go in the other room where we can talk, and let Anitra concentrate on her glamour shots, all right?”

  “All right.” Wolfe nodded to Anitra. “Break a leg, I guess.”

  “Thanks,” she said.

  Wolfe and Tripp followed the director into the next room, a massive bedroom suite with a hot tub in one corner and a bed that looked as if it belonged to a French emperor. Walderson closed the door behind them, then said, “Now. The manager said the Miami PD had some concerns about tomorrow night’s party?”

  “That’s correct,” Tripp said. “We’re running background checks on anybody working the event, and we’ve got employee lists from the party planner and the hotel. We’d like one from you as well.”

  “I don’t understand. What is it you’re looking for?” Walderson sounded genuinely puzzled.

  “We’re not at liberty to discuss details of the case,” Wolfe said. “But we’re trying to prevent problems, not cause them. Providing us with a list shouldn’t be hard, right?”

  “Well . . . no. I guess that would be all right. As long as this isn’t going to interfere with the shoot.”

  “Don’t see any reason it should,” Tripp said.