Cold Open, A Sam North Mystery (11 page)

Chapter Twenty-Seven

It was just past eight thirty when Freddie and I made our way across the upper level of the George Washington Bridge and into New Jersey.

To our left, down along the Hudson, the lights of Manhattan twinkled.

“And you think showing up unannounced at some guy’s house at nine o’clock at night is a good idea?” Freddie asked.

“Nine is the new eight,” I said. “Used to be you’d find people home at eight, you know, after dinner, maybe watching a little TV. Now you’ve got to wait until nine. Everybody’s busy, busy, busy.”

“Show up at my house at nine, and I’m going to beat your ass.”

“You’re going to be that hostile neighbor, aren’t you? The guy with the anger-management issues.”

“That’d be me.”

We drove west on Route 4 and headed toward Teaneck. The New Jersey town was the home of Herman Bindagi, the publisher of the
Corporate Corruption Investigation
newsletter.

Freddie steered the Cherokee off Route 4, and we drove on using the GPS, winding through a small shopping district with a Stop & Shop, a pizzeria, and a few other stores.

A few minutes later we were in a working-class neighborhood with small single-family houses. The Bindagi residence was 119 Sherman Lane. The house sat on a bit of a hill, up about a dozen steps from the sidewalk, and looked as if yard work and basic maintenance were not a priority for its owner.

There was a dim porch light on, but the blinds were down in the front windows, and there was no sign that anyone was home.

There were two reasons I needed to speak to Herman Bindagi: One was to find out if
CCI
was the source of Steele’s info on IT&E and Syria. The second was tied to the e-mail I had in my hands from
CCI
.

Last-minute change … something came up … but more on IT&E where that came from.

“You keep watch out here in case any suspicious types show up,” I said to Freddie as I got out.

“I’ll handle everyone with tact and gentleness,” he said.

I went up the concrete steps to the front door. The house was tired and in need of a paint job, its wood sagging and rotting in places. I rang the bell, stepped back, and waited.

No answer. I rang again. The corner of the blinds in the front window lifted, and someone peered out. The door was unlocked and opened a crack. A chain lock prevented it from opening farther.

Inside was a guy with a dark complexion, and head full of curly black hair that ran off in all directions.

“Yes?” he asked.

“Hi, Sam North, with Liberty News. Can we speak?”

“You have ID?” he asked.

I held up my NYPD press credential, and he stared at it.

“What do you want to talk about?” he asked.

“Think maybe we could take the chain off and I could come in?”

His eyes darted to the street behind me, like maybe someone was going to rush the door. Satisfied I wasn’t a threat, he removed the chain and opened the door. I stepped into a dark, enclosed porch. He stood and looked at me, not quite sure what to do next. My guess was Herman didn’t get many visitors.

“You have electricity?” I asked.

He reached over and flipped a switch, and a floor lamp in the corner of the porch came on. I got my first full look at Herman Bindagi. He was in his fifties, medium height, with broad shoulders but overweight. He was dressed in a pair of worn shorts that had lost their shape long ago and a light blue button-down oxford shirt with the sleeves rolled up to the elbows. He was barefoot, with toenails that needed some attention.

“You publish something called
CCI
?
Corporate Corruption Investigations?
” I asked.

“Why?”

I looked past him into the house. “You think maybe we could sit down for a few minutes and I’ll explain?”

“Sure,” he said.

He turned and led me off of the porch and into a hallway. There were stairs on the right, and we went into a room across the hall on the left. Down the hallway at the back of the house was the kitchen.

As we moved I heard scratching coming from the kitchen and the low rumble of a growl.

“Rex,” he yelled, “quiet.”

“Dog?” I asked.

“Old Rottweiler. Doesn’t hear real well. Takes him a while to get going, but when he
does …”

“Watch out, huh?”

“Yup. So I wouldn’t try anything.”

“Got it.”

In the living room he flipped on the lights. There was a big recliner at one end of the room with a small table next to it. The table was littered with folded newspapers, cans of Dr Pepper, and big open bags of chips and other junk food. It looked as if a vending machine had exploded.

He went for the recliner, and the only other place to sit was a small couch against the wall to my right.

“Corporate Corruption Investigations,”
I said.

“Yes, the authority on cases brought under the FCPA.”

“Mind telling me what the FCPA is?”

“Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. It’s what the Feds use to go after corporations that don’t play by the rules overseas.”

“What are the rules?”

“Thou shall not bribe government officials for contracts. That sort of thing,” he said.

“That a big problem?”

“For the U.S. government, yes. For a lot of those countries, it’s a way of life. Want that government contract to build a wireless phone network? Well, first you got to pay off the son of the neighbor to the nephew of the president to get it. Cost of doing business.”

“What about the countries less than friendly to the U.S.?”

“Whole other set of rules and a lot more complex,” he said. “And they come from the OFAC,” he said.

“I’m going to need some help again,” I said.

“Office of Foreign Assets Control. Part of Treasury. They implement and enforce regulations backing up the foreign policy of the good old U. S. of A.,” he said.

“Sanctions?”

“Bingo. The prez signs an executive order saying you can’t do business or export anything to country X because they suck and are hostile to the U.S.”

“And then nobody does business, right?”

“Hah. You’d be surprised. Some of these sleazy corporations find ways around. Maybe they get in bed with a local company, or some European company that doesn’t have any restrictions. When their crap shows up floating around in Syria or wherever, they say, ‘Oh, gee, we had a contact with Luigi. We didn’t know Luigi was turning around and selling our junk over there. Sorry.”

“You ever work with Jack Steele on anything?” I asked.

He went quiet on me like I had crossed some line.

I pulled the copy of the e-mail from my shirt pocket, went over, and handed it to him.

“You send this?”

He took it from me and looked at it. “No.”

“Who did?”

“Someone else,” he said.

“Herm, how about we work together on this?”

“I prefer Herman.”

“Not a problem. Look, I’m following up on some of Jack’s stories, and I know you sent the e-mail.”

“Maybe not,” he said.

“My guess is
CCI
is part of your media empire, which is run from this house, right?”

He nodded.

I looked around. “Seems to me you’re a one-man operation.”

“I have a reporter in D.C.”

“Did he or she send that e-mail?”

He didn’t say anything.

“I didn’t think so. Like I said, I’ve taken over Jack’s stories, so maybe you and I can work together, okay?”

No response.

“All I want to know is why you didn’t go to meet Jack?”

He started to tap his foot and we sat there looking at each other.

“Herman,” I said, “it’s not a big deal. I’m just curious why you didn’t go to meet Jack?”

“I … I haven’t been out of the house in a while.”

“What, allergies?” I asked.

He shook his head. “No, I think someone is watching me,” he said. “I’m scared to go out.”

“Living on chips and Dr Pepper?”

“That’s what I’m down to,” he said. “I think someone figured out I was giving Jack information. Someone related to IT&E.”

“But the stuff is public—it’s not like secret documents, right? You put out a newsletter.”

He got up from the recliner. “Come with me.”

Chapter Twenty-Eight

I followed him to the kitchen, and the dog let loose a few big barks at the stranger in the house.

“Hold on,” Herman said.

I waited while he grabbed Rex by the collar and half dragged him across the linoleum floor to the other side by the back door. Once there, he hooked the dog’s collar to a chain that ran to the metal piping of an old exposed radiator.

We went into a small room the size of a walk-in closet in the corner of the kitchen. A long wooden desk, a chair, and a small table with a printer on it took up almost every inch of the space.

Herman grabbed a letter-size brown envelope from the desktop, slid a five-by-seven picture out from it, and handed it to me.

“This stuff hasn’t been made public yet,” he said. “I got a whole new batch of stuff I was going to feed Jack.”

The shot was taken from a distance and looked like it was at a dusty airport. There were two men, one dark-skinned and the other white. The white guy was big, dressed in tan slacks and a brownish checked-pattern button-down shirt. In his hand he held a canvas tote bag. They were on a runway or tarmac standing next to a small jet.

“That slick-looking guy in the slacks and button-down?” he said.

“Who is he?”

“Billy Hunter. The frigging key to everything,” he said.

“Should I know the name?”

“Only if you represent a corrupt government in, say, Africa or the Middle East.”

“Go on.”

“Hunter works for IT&E,” he said. “That guy next to him is some peon from the Nigerian government. That canvas bag Hunter is holding? Guess what—it’s full of cash. The naira. That’s Nigerian money.”

“For?”

“Who knows? Best I can tell, this was tied to some contract for IT&E to supply energy equipment at a Nigerian oil facility.”

I looked at the photo, and the first thought I had was how good this would look on TV as part of a report.

“It gets better,” Herman said. “The bag was just a down payment. Apparently, the rest of the cash was stuffed into the backseat of a Mercedes. IT&E was paying something like a few hundred thousand U.S. dollars for the contract. Problem is, the locals wanted it in their currency. You need more than a hundred naira to get one dollar.”

“Lots of bills.”

“No kidding. They stuffed it all into a car and drove it to the guy’s house.”

“And this is what you were going to show Jack that night you guys planned to meet?”

Herman got quiet, a little sullen even, now.

“Yeah.”

There were more envelopes on his desk; he reached for another one and slipped three photos out of it. They all featured Hunter meeting people in various places. Dusty places next to buildings, around a parked car. All were taken from a distance and then blown up. In one shot there was a guy in a traditional Middle Eastern robe and headdress next to Hunter.

“How bad is this stuff for IT&E?” I asked.

“Some of it is small potatoes.”

“Some big?”

“Very. Let me put it this way. When this gets out, IT&E is going to be investigated by the Feds and eventually, probably, fined hundreds of millions of dollars. That don’t exactly look good for Buck McConnell or his political hopes. Try running for president while your employees are paying off third-world thugs to win contracts.”

McConnell had been something of a whispered candidate for everything from a race for a Texas senate seat to the White House, but he had never taken the plunge.

I looked at the other envelopes.

“You got more here, don’t you Herman?” I asked.

He didn’t say anything.

“A lot more, right?” I said.

“Maybe.” He shifted a bit, like he wanted to make sure he was between me and the stuff on his desk. “But these are the ones Jack was interested in,” he said, looking at the pictures of Hunter.

“So Jack knew you had all these new pictures?” I asked.

“Oh yeah. He knew I had some good stuff. I gave him a little taste a few days before he died.”

“Just to show him what you had.”

“Yeah, dropped a copy of one of the Hunter shots off at security at your building on Sixth.”

“You hand delivered it?”

“Yeah, I didn’t want to take any chances,” he said.

“With what?”

“You know, it falling into the wrong hands. That kind of thing.”

“Jack comes down to meet you?”

“Oh, no, he sends an underling. Mikey, I think.”

“Marty?”

“Yeah, that guy. Fat guy.”

I looked at Herman. Pot. Kettle.

“So Herman,” I said. “How many people subscribe to your newsletter?”

“We haven’t been audited in a while, but I’d say it’s in the thousands.”

“Really?”

He hesitated. “Yeah … maybe. Maybe less.”

“And your readers are?”

“Some of the business press. Guys who should be covering this stuff themselves but are too lazy or incompetent.”

“Not a big audience. Must be others.”

“Watchdog groups. Even a lot of corporations. They read it to see if they’re showing up
in it.”

“How do you get your info?”

“I get calls. Tips. Been doing this a long time. People know me.”

“You make a good living?” I asked.

Judging by the house, Herman was either a frugal guy or struggling to make ends meet.

“I do okay,” he said.

I let his answer sit there for a moment. “You were charging Jack for this stuff, weren’t you?” I asked, waving the pictures of Hunter.

He bristled and became nervous. “No … not at all. I … I …”

“Herman,” I said. “It’s okay. I’m not here to judge you, I just want to know any arrangement you guys had, that’s all.”

It took him a moment to decide. “Okay,” he said.

“That’s why you hand delivered a picture, right? Marty probably paid you?” I asked.

He nodded. “Yeah, not even sure he knew it, but he gave me an envelope with five hundred bucks.”

“Not bad.”

“It was a start. Figured I’d get a few thousand for the rest of them.”

“And you were going to show them to Jack at the motel? See if you could work out some deal.”

“Yeah. Jack wanted to see what I had.”

“You spoke to him?”

“Twice,” he said. “Jack said he was going to nail Buck McConnell, and good.”

“Which was all good for you, since you have the evidence.”

“It was good until I got spooked. I swear, somebody was out front watching me,” he said.

“So you canceled.”

“I tried to reschedule with Jack, but it took a day or two for us speak,” he said.

“No e-mails?”

“No, not after the one you found. Jack said he wanted to talk on the phone. He said he was putting together a huge story on McConnell that was going to force the bastard out at IT&E.”

I waved the pictures. “Based on these?”

“He said he had other information, too.”

“When was the last time you spoke to him?”

“Monday. The day before he died. He said to call him back later in the week. Said he had a lot going on but wanted to see what I had.”

“Then he dies,” I said.

“Changed everything.”

“Put an even bigger scare into you,” I said.

“Damn straight,” he said.