Dollar Down (15 page)

"David?"

"Leave me alone." Must have recognized my voice.

"If that's what you want, but I need to talk to you one
last time."

"You need? Why should I care what you need?"

Why indeed. "The oil sample could be evidence in a
murder case."

"Yeah, murder case, maybe mine, if you don't leave me
alone."

"Did the mainlander threaten you?"

He hung up. I called back.

"I can help you with threats." I said when he picked up.
All I heard in reply was angry breathing.

"I doubt that. You can't even help your own
people."

He hung up again and didn't answer when I called back.
Did he know about Sabine and Trevor? If so, how?

If not, who or what was he talking about?

When I got back to Sabine's flat, I had an email from
my Houston friend. I called him.

"Send your sample if you still want it analyzed," he said.
"I found a lab that can verify whether the stuff is from the
Orinoco. It might also be able to identify the bacteria. This
place has done some bacteria experiments on Canadian tar
sands. They say they know all about it. In fact, they're so eager
to see your oil that they'll do the analysis for free."

"How long?"

"Pretty quick."

"Good job."

Alexandra had been in the bath when I got back. I
heard the bathroom door close and the pad of bare feet
heading my way. She stepped into the living room with a small
towel draped across her hair and a larger one wrapped around
her body. Her legs were pink from the heat of the water. In the
room's slight chill, an aura of steam rose from her thighs and
shoulders. Her smile was broad and free of the tension that I
had grown accustomed to seeing in her face.

"How did your meeting go?" She wrapped her hair in
the small towel and squeezed.

"Good jazz."

"That's why you went, to listen to music?"

"I'd hoped to learn a little more about our Chinese
friend David and a guy from the mainland. Didn't find out
much."

Alexandra sat on a cushioned chair across from me and
fluffed out her damp hair. No marble goddess now. I glanced at
her legs long enough for her to notice. I tried not to, but my
eyes apparently were willing to accept direction from body
parts other than my brain. In any case, she didn't seem to
mind.

"I called David after I met my friend, but he refused to
talk to me."

"Why?"

"Fear, I guess. Probably a sensible decision."

"I don't understand. What would he have to fear?"

"Don't know."

"Even if you did know, what then?"

That was more of a statement than a question. There
was no good reply.

"Do you really think there might be another
reason—besides their involvement—for what happened with Sabine and
Trevor? What else could it be?"

"Nothing I can put my finger on, but among other
things there's a spooky Venezuelan who shouldn't be involved
in this at all."

"Who?" A shadow of her icy self drifted across
Alexandra's face.

"Cervantes."

"He's not spooky."

"What do you know about him?"

"I've met him. He's charming. He works for
PDVSA."

"Not exactly, he works for President Maduro."

"What do you mean?" She tittered in a way that
seemed either nervous or forced.

"Probably nothing. It's a state company, so I doubt it
matters, but he's paid by Maduro's office."

"How do you know that?"

"Nosing around is what I do. Let's forget it."

"That's the best thing you've said yet." Whether
naturally or artfully, Alexandra's warmer persona was coming
back. "Why don't you let it go for a while? Take a break. It
might make everything clear. That happens to me sometimes
with a study. If you're too focused, you can miss things."

She tucked her feet onto the chair in a move that
caused the towel to open along the side of her thigh. "Let's both
set ourselves free, just for the weekend, maybe a long
three-day weekend. Do you like sailing?"

"Love it as long as someone else handles the rigging.
The only thing I know about sailing is how to be ballast."

Alexandra planted her feet on the floor and leaned
forward. Her body language was putting stress on the towel
that it wasn't designed for. "You can leave the rigging to me.
I've been sailing since I was ten. Do you remember the harbor
at Monaco? We can rent a boat and sail down the coast. If you
like, we can take a week and sail all the way to Ibiza. I have a
cottage there."

"I..." I couldn't speak well. "No," was the obvious
answer, but it was hard to say.

"Mick, no sea on Earth is more beautiful."

There were a lot of unresolved aspects in my
investigation that needed to be checked and not much time, but
Alexandra was punching buttons deep in my pleasure center
and at the moment I didn't know a better way to spend time.
"Not a week, I can't be out of the picture that long, but a
weekend sounds good."

"Excellent, let's leave now."

"Let's go tomorrow after I send the oil sample to
Houston."

"Send it from Monaco. Let's drive, if we leave now, we
can get there early tomorrow. Make it a long weekend."
Alexandra moved over next to me. "We can take turns driving.
You first, I'll sleep." She lay her head on my shoulder and made
little snoring sounds. She put her lips close to my ear. "Then
tomorrow, we'll sail. Woosh." Her breath tickled. "We'll glide
over the waves."

"Why not go to Le Havre, it's closer."

"Because Le Havre is not on the Cote d'Azure." She
tacked her hand back and forth like a little sailboat across my
thigh. "We can sail to Marseille and back. How about it?"

Two days when no one else in the world was at work.
Why not?

"I need to make a phone call." I tried to contact
Burroughs. No luck, so I sent an email and asked him to call me.
That was the only loose end that needed to be sewn up right
away. While Alexandra got ready, I stuffed a T-shirt, underwear
and a toothbrush into a satchel and made a schedule. We
should be able to find a boat, rig it and put to sea by early
afternoon. Go someplace, maybe not Marseille, that might take
a little longer than a weekend. Who cared where? Sleep on
board, spend Saturday at sea and come back to Paris Sunday
night.

Despite the allure of those visions, I started having
second thoughts about leaving the investigation for a weekend.
Those misgivings were seared away in the flash of a smile,
when Alexandra came in with a handbag and a coat slung over
her shoulder. Her upper body moved freely as she walked
toward me. If she wore any garment under her contoured
jersey, it was insubstantial.

"Let's go," she said.

I was ready.

Alexandra navigated us out of the city. Once we were
on the highway, I took over. She lay her seat back and closed
her eyes. If the trip was supposed to double as a vacation, I
should have turned off my mobile phone. It buzzed. I fit a plug
into my ear and found myself listening to Jim Burroughs
growl.

"Here's your call back. Anything special or did you just
want to chat?"

"I was checking in to see—"

"There's plenty to see all right. We've been looking at
some doozy currency moves. Money's flowing into forex
derivatives like the Amazon floods in rainy season. All headed
toward our strike date."

"How do you know that?"

"There's my little secret. Sorry, Sanchez, but I betrayed
your confidence a smidgen. I told the feds. I have a couple of
admirers in the Securities and Exchange Commission. If I give
them a tip, they know there's something to it. I've helped them
before. No offense, but there's too much going on for a lonely PI
in Paris to handle, even with the help of me and other civilians
like Bizet."

"Take it down a notch, Jim. Try starting from the
beginning. Chronology's a good strategy."

"More layman, right?"

"Something like that." I figured Burroughs' admission
that he needed the SEC was as close to humility as he got. The
"layman line" put him back on track.

"I was running simulations on what we had, but the
sampling was too small, and it relied on old data. I needed
more and newer information. Still do, but more than that, I
wanted lots of muscle. If anyone is trying to rig the markets, we
need to stomp them."

"What can the SEC do if the trades are being handled
through London and they're in the foreign exchange market?
That's outside SEC reach isn't it?"

"It can twist arms and cajole. Also frighten. LIFFE has
as much stake in this as anyone. It's agreed to give up a little
proprietary data on dollar trends."

"Where is the flood of money coming from?"

"The money's being bounced around so much, I haven't
been able to track the source. There may be a few or several,
but informed speculation says China's the main one."

"Who's doing the informed speculating, and is anyone
guessing why?"

"A number of traders I know say there's a lot of action
through firms that are associated with Chinese interests.
Naturally, nobody actually doing the trades will say anything. It
might jeopardize their profits. As for why, they're traders, like I
said. Who wouldn't rig the market to increase take and lower
risk, if you could get away with it? What other motivation
besides money would they understand?"

"You remember the Chinese paper that I asked you
about?"

"The one with the sophisticated encryption?"

"Yeah that one. It described a cheap way to lower the
viscosity of extra heavy oil. A couple of engineers from China
Petroleum were touring the Orinoco recently. Do you think
there might be a connection to the forex deal?"

"Huh? Imagine me doing a double-take, right now. I
don't get it."

"Not evident is it? It's just that I've run into both events
from an unlikely starting point. It might be more than
coincidence."

"You're not a conspiracy nut, are you Sanchez? Don't
you need an assassination or two for a proper
conspiracy?"

I didn't tell Burroughs, but that was what had got this
all started.

"We've got enough to try to figure out without
mucking up forex with petroleum. What's your next
move?"

"A few days of sailing. I'm on the highway now."

"A working holiday?"

"Just a weekend."

"The strike date is in six days from now, 5:00 p.m.
Greenwich Mean Time. Can't you wait till then?"

I didn't have anything to say to that. Burroughs had
only reinforced my earlier misgivings. I glanced at Alexandra.
She looked concerned. She put her hand on my thigh.

"You got this started, Sanchez. If we hadn't known
what to look for, chances are no one would have associated the
trends we're seeing with China. The forex market is a mighty
big place. There are a lot of ways to cover trades. If there is a
malicious player out there, one that's huge and knowledgeable,
it could wreak a slew of grief."

"I don't know if there is much else to find out. I've got a
few people being watched. If anything happens, the watcher
will contact me."

"Well how about this? You just asked me if I saw any
connection between China Petroleum and this forex deal. That
was so far out in left field it was behind the bleachers. I have no
idea. But I do know that you wouldn't have asked without a
reason. Why don't you spend the next day or so figuring out
why you asked that? Might put it all together, then you could
go sailing."

I could do a couple of things: stay in Monaco and try to
keep Alexandra away from her office as long as I could, or
collect my fee from Oddsson and go home.

Or, I could finish what I started.

"I have to go back, Alexandra." I made an illegal U-turn
and headed toward Paris.

"Why! What are you doing! Who was that?"

"I can't tell you, now."

"You mean you
won't
."

"Maybe we can go sailing next weekend."

"No, we can't. This was my once-in-a-career week,
Mick, my one chance to stick my thumb in the eye of Ian
Graham and all the other pompous partners I've had to deal
with. Why are you doing this?"

"I started out trying to find Trevor then to figuring out
Sabine's death to remove some of the heat from Oddsson. I'm
not leading this case; it's leading me. There's something out
there that's big, and I might be a key to finding it."

I'm not a mind-reader, but I sensed her anger flow
away. I also sensed an aura of suspicion.

As we entered Paris, Alexandra had to tell me where to
turn. That mundane necessity seemed to have put her back on
an even keel by the time we arrived at Sabine's flat. I asked her
if she would still help me. "Who knows, we might keep the
world safe for financial speculators."

"Real crime fighters. Do I get a cape?" She stood with
her feet spread and put her fists on her hips.

"And a mask." I copied her stance.

"Sounds kinky." She smiled. It was an easy gesture and
mildly flirtatious.

I touched her waist as she kissed my cheek. She wore a
faint fragrance that hinted of tangerine and peach.

"I'd better get my rest then. Good night, Mick." She
went to bed and left me bathed in the aura of her touch and
scent.

I didn't know what he looked like, but even so, a vision
of Jim Burroughs rose in my mind. I strangled him. I might have
done likewise to the man himself if he had been on the same
continent. I imagined the swell of the sea, smell of salt and the
wind tossing Alexandra's hair. His
why
seemed far less
important than it had in the car.

The only question I could think about now was why I
had listened to him. I poured myself a shot of brandy and
swirled the glass under my nose. The fumes were pungent, but
I still smelled Alexandra. I put the glass down without tasting
the fiery liquid and walked to her door.