by Lisa Unger
“What do you have for me?” she asked Craig.
“Let’s see,” he said with a sigh. “There’s no way to describe Nathan Quinn, other than he is an American blue blood. The heir to the fortune his father, Reginald Quinn, made in real estate, he went to Groton, then on to Yale, which he graduated in 1963. From there, he went into international banking at Chase Manhattan. He got his MBA from Columbia University. And after working at Chase for nearly fifteen years, he spread his wings and opened his own company, Quinn Enterprises.”
“What do they do?”
“As far as I can tell, they are a venture-capitalist firm. They loan money to entrepreneurs, struggling countries, whatever they deem to be an appropriate risk. And then they either make a huge percentage on their shares when the enterprise succeeds or take ownership when it fails. It’s hard to tell, though. It’s a privately held company. They’re clean with the IRS. They made nearly a billion dollars in the nineties. But the weird thing is, they pulled out of their dot-com companies a few months before everything started to crash. Meaning they didn’t lose their shirts like a lot of people.”
“Interesting.”
“It gets more interesting.”
“Do tell.”
She watched as a handsome, well-dressed young man left the Fitore residence. At first glance, he looked like a thinner, more modern James Dean, with slicked-back darkish blond hair. He walked with a casual slump and the smooth, confident gait of a young punk who thinks he’s a man. She could also tell by the way his expensive jacket hung at the inseam that he was carrying a gun—a very big gun.
“Jenna and Tatiana Quinn and the maid, Valentina Fitore, are all Albanian, right? Quinn Enterprises was heavily invested in the Albanian government—if you can call it that—that took the reins right after the fall of communism. You know about that? The whole pyramid scheme that basically destroyed the country’s entire economy?”
“Um, no.”
Craig had a way of making Lydia feel like the most uninformed human being on the planet. Even though she read more than most people and studied newspapers religiously, he always seemed to have more information than seemed possible for someone so young.
“When the Communist regime ended in Albania,” he explained patiently, “chaos ensued, leaving the country ripe for the takeover of organized crime. It was already the poorest country in Europe, but things got even worse in 1997. An investment opportunity, into which hundreds of thousands of Albanian citizens had sunk their life savings, was revealed as fraudulent. The government had, according to critics, colluded in the scheme. Riots ensued when the investors realized that their money was gone forever.”
“Wow … that’s fucked-up.”
“Well, Nathan Quinn made a lot of money on that, too.”
“How?”
“I’m not clear on that. I just tripped over the information. I was entering the names of the companies in which Quinn Enterprises had invested, which I got from the IRS database, into a search engine—”
“Craig,” she interrupted, “you hacked into the IRS? Please don’t tell me these things. Jeffrey would kill us both.”
“Okay, I mean got from my ‘contact’ at the IRS. One of these companies was called American Equities. I got a list of articles about the crash. Turns out that Quinn Enterprises funded the company that destroyed the Albanian economy. The president of AE, an alleged boss in the Albanian mob, a John Gotti–type character over there named Radovan Mladic, killed himself. Quinn walked away from the whole thing without a financial blemish. In fact, nearly a hundred million dollars richer, according to the IRS.”
“That has to be illegal somehow? Aren’t there laws?” asked Lydia.
“Not for some of us, apparently,” he replied with a smug laugh.
Lydia found herself wondering if Craig was talking about Quinn or about himself. She couldn’t imagine how he was hacking into government computers without getting caught. And she didn’t want to know.
She watched the young man get into the Porsche and back up out of the driveway. He pulled up right next to the Jeep, but because of the black tinted windows on her vehicle and the fact that she slouched down in her seat, he didn’t notice her inside. He flicked on the interior light and was intent on his own reflection in the rearview mirror as he paused for a second while he smoothed out his already-perfect hair. He had the bluest eyes Lydia had ever seen. Then he gunned the engine, barked second, and was gone.
“That’s all I’ve got for now. I’m still digging.”
“Thanks, Craig.”
She hung up the phone and looked at the black tire marks the Porsche had left in the road. She didn’t have time to wonder who the young man was, because then a black stretch limousine pulled up to the curb. She had to assume it was the Quinns’ driver, because Valentina Fitore climbed out, still in her maid’s uniform. She walked around to the driver, who hadn’t made a move to get out and open the door for her. They exchanged what looked to be a few friendly words, and then he drove off, leaving Valentina standing in the street.
Lydia climbed out of her Jeep and walked around the front of the vehicle.
“Mrs. Fitore,” she called.
Valentina looked as if she had been expecting Lydia, and she regarded her with some combination of sad resignation and fear. She backed away a little, glancing uneasily around her.
“Mrs. Fitore,” Lydia said gently, leaning on the hood. “We need to talk.”
“I can’t speak to you, Miss Strong. I make a horrible mistake.” she said. Her words were clear and her accent heavy. She had forced her mouth into a hard line, and she frowned, deep lines creasing her brow. Lydia could see in Valentina the stress of a lifetime of struggle and fighting to protect herself.
“Please, Valentina. I want to help Tatiana,” she said, appealing to the emotions that must have been present to inspire her to send the letter and tape, if she had, in fact, done so. Lydia could see in Valentina’s eyes the battle being waged between conscience and fear.
Then she saw the older woman’s expression soften, and Valentina took a step toward Lydia. But when she opened her mouth, her words were drowned by a screeching of tires that sounded like a human scream. Time seemed to slow and warp as a black Mercedes sedan with heavily tinted windows closed in on them like a storm. In one moment, Valentina stood before Lydia. In the next, she was struck hard by the metal grill with a sickening crack. She was mercilessly pushed by the car fender as Lydia watched, helpless, astonished. An inhuman sound that was despair and anger escaped Lydia’s throat as she, unthinking, ran after the Mercedes. When it stopped, Lydia froze, and for an eternal moment the street seemed to hold its breath. A flock of small green parrots screeched overhead as they fled from the tree they’d been perched in. Then the driver slammed the car into reverse, Lydia directly in its path. She managed to leap to the side of the road and crawl behind the Jeep. Her gun was still inside the vehicle, sitting uselessly on the bottom of her bag on the backseat. She struggled toward the back door, watching the wheels of the Mercedes from beneath her car as it continued its path, backing down the street, then sped off. She lay still for a moment, gasping for breath; then she pulled herself from the ground. People had started to come from their houses.
“Are you all right?” a frightened voice called.
“Call an ambulance,” a more frightened voice answered, and Lydia realized it was her own voice. She ran toward Valentina, who lay on the road, a crumbled pile of herself in a spreading pool of blood. Her dead eyes registered horrified surprise, her lips slightly parted.
“Oh God,” whispered Lydia, assailed by guilt and regret as she knelt beside the woman, Valentina’s blood soaking into the knees of Lydia’s jeans. “Oh God. What’s happening here?”
chapter eleven
He felt a shock of fear when he saw her sitting with her head in her hands and the knees of her jeans soaked through with blood. She sat alone in a glass-walled interrogation room. Her heels resting on the metal chair legs,
her elbows on her thighs, she moved her fingers across her forehead in circles, as if rubbing away the sight she had just witnessed. He was reminded what a small woman she was, just under five six, weighing in at 120 pounds, give or take. He always thought of her as strong and powerful, the energy of her personality taking up much more space than her physical frame. He remembered the first time he’d seen her, perched on the stoop of her mother’s house in Sleepy Hollow, sinking into grief, terrified and traumatized. He hadn’t thought of that night in so long.
Jeffrey and Detective Ignacio had raced back to the station house when the call came over the police radio. And the ride had been an eternity, even knowing that Valentina was the sole casualty at the scene. He’d had an instinct that Lydia should not make that trip alone, but he had kept his mouth shut, knowing that she would have given him shit for being overprotective. She easily could have been killed. It would be awhile before he could forgive himself for that.
She raised her eyes, saw him approaching, and gave him a weak smile. He hoped she would jump up and run to him, but she didn’t. He could see as he strode toward her that she had pulled the shades down in her eyes. She had taken on the coldness that she used to protect herself in moments like this. And he hated it. Hated that she’d had cause to learn how to do that in her life, and hated that she was in a position where she needed to again. Their last year together had been so peaceful, free from murder and mayhem. He was starting to think that they needed a career change.
“Are you all right?” he asked when he entered the room. She rose and let herself be taken into his arms, where she clung to him for a second.
“I’m okay. Valentina Fitore is dead,” she said, moving away from him and sitting down again. Jeffrey and Detective Ignacio took seats at the table.
“What happened?”
“One second, we were standing on the street. The next second, a black Mercedes came out of nowhere and just mowed her down. It was unbelievable. I never saw it coming.”
“They’re calling it a hit-and-run,” said the detective.
“It was no accident—whoever was driving that car aimed for her and raced off after he’d finished the job. It was a hit, no doubt about it.”
“Did you give your statement?”
She nodded. “I told them what I saw.”
“And why you were there?” asked the detective, wondering how much damage control he was going to have to do with his superiors.
“More or less. I said it was for an interview, based on a correspondence I had received from Mrs. Fitore. In my capacity as a writer, of course.”
The detective smiled.
“Did you get a chance to talk to her? Did she say anything to you before she died?”
“She never had a chance.”
Lydia tried not to replay the moment in her mind over and over. But her brain was stuck in some sort of sick loop. Repeatedly, she saw Valentina lifted away by the Mercedes’s fender, heard the horrifying crack at impact, saw her lifeless eyes. But sitting there waiting for Jeffrey and the detective, she’d had a chance to consider a few other things, as well. Who suspected that Valentina had information she shouldn’t have, and how did that person know that Lydia would be there waiting to speak to her about it? How did Valentina afford to live in a neighborhood like that on a maid’s salary? And why wasn’t that a detail that seemed suspicious to Ignacio? Who was the young man driving the Porsche?
She looked over at the detective, who had his head down, one hand on his forehead, and was tapping his right index finger lightly on the table. He’s kept something from you, her inner voice warned as goose bumps raised on her arms. There’s another piece to the puzzle that he didn’t reveal.
She slid in closer to him. “I was thinking, Detective,” she said slowly, “that’s an awfully nice house for a maid. And another interesting thing I observed … I saw a young man leaving in a Boxster.”
The tapping finger stilled, but Detective Ignacio didn’t raise his eyes to hers.
“What’s going on, Detective? I get the sense that there’s more to Valentina Fitore than you let on.”
The detective looked a little embarrassed. She watched as a flush of red crept up from beneath his collar and painted his cheeks.
“Valentina lives with her daughter. Marianna is just a kid, like I told you. A sophomore in college this year,” he said, delaying what came next. “But Valentina’s brother, Sasa, spends a lot of time at the house. Sasa … he’s a real bad man in the Albanian Mafia. On a pretty high level, from what I understand. Anyway, that’s somebody else’s problem.”
“The feds?” asked Jeffrey.
“Yeah. And they’re pretty uptight about the whole thing. When this whole Tatiana thing came down, they more or less told us to back off the Fitores. They didn’t want us fucking up their investigation. I guess I was sort of hoping that maybe there wasn’t a connection between Sasa Fitore and Tatiana’s disappearance. I guess I was wrong.” He shook his head.
“That’s why you let Lydia go there alone? Because you knew you would get shit for going where you had been told to step off?” asked Jeffrey.
The detective looked down at the table. “I’m sorry, Lydia. I never imagined I was putting you in any danger. Not like that.”
“I know,” she said. She didn’t blame him for being desperate and taking his opportunity for a back door into the Fitore house. But Jeffrey did.
“I’d never even heard of the Albanian Mafia until all this came down,” he said, looking at Lydia but avoiding Jeffrey’s eyes. “Apparently, they flew onto the FBI’s radar in 1994. The feds call them YACS—Yugoslavians, Albanians, Croats, and Serbs, though they mostly consist of Albanians. They pulled a bunch of heists—ATMs, cell phones … small-time stuff but big money. They were superorganized, skilled paramilitary shit, planning for every contingency … even getting arrested. And when someone got caught, he never talked. Like I said, the American police and prison systems look like Club Med to some of these guys. The FBI spent years spinning their wheels. Then things started to escalate after 1997. The feds started to believe that they were into all kinds of shit—drugs, prostitution, slavery. And they’re vicious—they make the Italians look like a bunch of Campfire Girls. They don’t have a code.… Women and children are fair game. They don’t have “families” and “bosses” like the Cosa Nostra. So they’ve been harder to pin down. I am guessing that now the feds have something on Sasa and they don’t want it fucked up, even at the expense of a little girl’s life.”
Jeffrey knew better than anyone that the FBI could be like a dog with a bone—it was part of the reason he’d left the Bureau. When it came to an end result, they worried more about media scandal than they did about human casualties, more about making the collar at any cost.
“I’m sure we can expect a visit sometime soon,” said Jeffrey.
“I’ll bet you’re right. And I have a few questions for them, too,” Lydia responded. She paused a second and then leaned toward Detective Ignacio. “If we’re going to help you find Tatiana, Detective, you’re going to have to be honest with us from this point forward. No more surprises.”
Jeffrey didn’t say anything, but his cool expression and folded hands said he wasn’t happy about anything that was going on.
“You have my word,” the detective said, raising his hands and giving a little laugh. Jeffrey thought he looked too relieved, as if he’d gotten away with something.
“What’s he into, Manny?” said Jeffrey.
“Who? Sasa?” he asked.
Jeffrey just looked at him.
“I don’t know for sure,” he said. “A prostitution thing, you know, pimping, I’d imagine.”
Lydia noticed the blush creeping back up from his collar. Jeffrey shook his head. “No, that’s not big enough for all of this intrigue,” he said.
“Listen, I really don’t know for sure,” he said earnestly. He paused a second, as if trying to figure out how to say it. “But I heard that it involves films.�
� He sounded as if the words tasted bitter on his tongue. “Bad stuff. You know, bondage porn that ends with murder.”
“You’re talking about snuff films?” asked Lydia, incredulous.
The detective nodded. His answer hung in the air between them, the implications expanding in each of their minds. Lydia’s mind went back to the letter she’d received: “And you must help Tatiana Quinn and all the other girls who are in need of rescue. There are too many who are already past helping.”
“And even with this knowledge, you were able to convince yourself that there was no connection between Sasa Fitore and the fact that a young girl is missing?” asked Lydia, trying and failing to keep the judgment out of her voice.
His face darkened a bit. “Like I said, I’ve been warned to step off. I have to follow the rules here or I’ll lose my career. I’m not a free agent like the two of you. I lose my job and my kid doesn’t go to college, my wife doesn’t get medication for her diabetes. Do you understand that?”
She did understand. She understood that this was the reason he’d been so happy to have their help, because they were going to be able to follow leads that he couldn’t, take the kind of risks that he wasn’t willing or able to take for Tatiana.
“Do you think that whoever killed Valentina did it because she knew something and someone didn’t want her to talk? Or could it have been a message to Sasa?”
“I don’t know,” said the detective. “I just don’t know.”
“It’s a pretty big coincidence that Valentina got hit just a couple of hours after we took that tape and note to Jenna Quinn,” observed Jeffrey.
Lydia nodded, taking the information in and wondering if they had gotten Valentina killed. And if so, what did that tell them about Jenna Quinn?
“What about the bartender?” asked Lydia, remembering the errand Manny and Jeff had been on when Valentina was killed.
“When we walked in the door of the restaurant, that pretty-boy bartender looked like he was going to wet himself. He pretended he didn’t remember me,” said Jeffrey. “Eventually, fifty dollars jogged his memory about the event. But when we showed him the picture from the surveillance photo, he said he couldn’t be sure if it was the same man who had bought our drinks. Said it was possible but that he wasn’t a hundred percent sure.”
