Greed: A Detective John Lynch Thriller (7 page)

Johnson turned, took a peek. “PR. Publisher’s got me booked solid the next couple weeks. Keep having the same conversation over and over again.”

“You’ve got it down, what I’ve seen. Things looking good?”

She shrugged. “Going to a third printing, just on the pre-orders. Not Sarah Palin numbers, but good.”

Lynch smiled at her and nodded.

“None of that would have happened without you,” she said.

“Sure,” said Lynch. “Don’t forget the little people.”

She frowned a little, not sure how to take that. “That a problem?”

He shook his head. “Weird, is all. Got my wake-up from the clock radio the other day, you talking with somebody over at WBBM. I’m half out of it, reach over to the other side of the bed before I realize you’re not there.”

She gave him a sly smile. “I’ve got better ways to wake you up, Lynch. You know that.”

“That I do,” he said. “That I do.” She was only in town for the night, back to New York in the morning. But he was glad they were at McGinty’s. Not the kind of place where he’d spend dinner watching her sign napkins and pose for pictures.

“This Stein thing going to be another hairball?” Johnson asked. Lynch and Johnson had a deal. Anything they said was strictly off the record unless they both agreed otherwise, and she’d kept her end of the bargain right down the line. Nice to have somebody to talk to, somebody outside the department.

“Don’t know what to make of it yet. Second killing just up the street the same night, looks like the same shooter. Some African refugee. Bernstein’s pulling Stein’s business shit apart. The whole thing’s got a funny smell to it already.”

Waitress dropped off their burgers, and Johnson took a huge bite, closed her eyes for a moment, smiled. “Jesus, real food.”

“They aren’t feeding you out east?”

“Oh, sure, all the arugula and overpriced fish I can eat. You go to Komi with Stephanopoulos, you don’t get any bacon cheeseburgers.”

Lynch laughed. “And how is George?”

“Short. Nice hair, though.”

 

Later, upstairs in Lynch’s apartment, she lay on top of him on the bed. They hadn’t been together in three weeks, so the first time had been urgent, but now they were rocking gently. Her Blackberry buzzed, vibrating on the table next to the bed. She didn’t reach for it, he had to give her that, but he felt her stiffen for a second, and she never seemed to come all the way back to him. He couldn’t blame her exactly, but that didn’t mean he had to like it. They finished.

“I’m going to wash up a bit,” she said, rolling off him. “Have to catch a plane in a couple hours.”

“Still back tomorrow though?” Lynch asked.

She nodded, already had the Blackberry up, scrolling through her messages. She took the phone into the bathroom with her.

Lynch lay on the bed, staring at the ceiling. She was the best thing in his life, and she was in the bathroom with her Blackberry. He was in his bed alone.

 

 

CHAPTER 10

 

Nick Hardin was working on plan B.

With Stein dead, he could go to Mossad direct. But he didn’t have a personal contact and Mossad tended to play dirty. If he walked into the consulate, he might get his $10 million, or he might get ten cents of lead through the brainpan. More likely, they’d use this as leverage, and ship him back to Africa as their personal indentured asset until his luck ran out. Hardin was looking for an exit strategy, not an unpaid second career as Tel Aviv’s sub-Saharan lackey.

No, he wasn’t going to Mossad, not without Stein running interference.

What he needed was somebody with the contacts and ethics of a French arms dealer. So he picked up a throwaway cell at a Loop Radio Shack and called one.

Pierre Fouche was living the good life in the south of France, but Hardin had known him when he was Ivan Sidorov, just another Spetsnaz refugee looking to make his way in the Legion after the wheels came off the big Red machine and Moscow stopped paying their shooters. Hardin had saved Sidorov’s life, twice.

“Pierre, how’s life in Marseilles?”

“Hardin, you bastard. Where have you gone?” said Fouche. “I have been trying to reach you for days. I had a sweet deal cooking in Accra, just needed a body on the ground, and nobody could find you. Then I start hearing stories – a couple of dead Hezbollah couriers, lots of angry camel jockeys looking for you. You’re in
beaucoup de merde
, my friend.”

“Why do you think I’m calling you? You wanna make a few euros?”

“Dollars, Hardin,” Fouche said. “Haven’t you been paying attention to the news? We got Greece and Spain circling the drain over here, Italy’s being run like a Fellini film, and the Germans are using euros as asswipes trying to clean up the mess. I want to make a few dollars.”

“Whatever,” Hardin said. “Look, I’m sitting on a shitload of raw stones. I had a deal with Stein. You hear about Stein?”

“Of course, and after I heard about this Hezbollah business, I figured they’d be fishing your body out of the lake up there any day now. Thought for sure it was a two-fer, and they’d just taken you somewhere to ask politely about the diamonds.”

“Guess Stein stepped in some other shit,” Hardin said. “Anyway, I gotta unload these rocks and get out of Dodge. You got any ideas?”

“Russians like diamonds – mostly they like to keep them locked up and off the market, prop the prices up. I still got some contacts there, could probably find you a middleman. I’ll be taking a million off the top, just so you know.”

“Wouldn’t trust you if you didn’t.”

“Don’t suppose you want to leave me your number?” said Fouche.

“No. I’ll be playing musical phones for the duration. How much time you need?”

“It will take two days. Call me then.”

Hardin hung up. Two days. So stay put or switch locations? Stay put, and if somebody’s got a line on you, then you’re toast. Move around and you increase your exposure. Hardin figured if the Arabs had a line on him, they would have made their play last night. So for now, stay put.

 

Marco “Beans” Garbanzo and Ricky “Snakes” DeGetano sat in a stolen Grand Marquis at the north end of the Grant Park garage, eyeballing Hardin’s car. They had Hardin’s picture and a cell number. Soon as they see him heading for the car, they make the call and this guy shuts the camera down for a couple minutes, that’s what Corsco told them.

Snakes was in charge; Beans was the muscle. Beans was huge, closing in on 350 pounds.

“Been down here half the fucking day,” said Beans. “I’m starving.”

“Guy rents a car, eventually he’ll come down to his car. So just shut up and keep your eyes open,” said Snakes.

Snakes heard a low, liquidy rumble. Then the smell hit him.

“Jesus fucking Christ, Beans,” said Snake, buzzing down his window.

“Hey, I got a condition.”

“What you got is you’re hauling like a whole extra person around on account of how you’re always shoveling food in your face. You do that again and I’m leaving your body in the trunk.”

Garbanzo farted again, on purpose.

 

CHAPTER 11

 

Lynch picked up Bernstein at the station and they headed downtown to talk to Telling, the attorney Kate Magnus had pointed him at.

“You say Doug Telling?” Bernstein asked.

“Yeah, know him?”

“If it’s the same guy, yeah. He ran in my parents’ circles. Used to be a big shot down at MacMillian & Lowe, place Governor Timpson went for his payday after he got done on the public tit.”

“Address I got puts him in the Old Colony Building,” Lynch said. “That would have been hot shit a century ago, but it’s a pretty big step down from the MacMillian digs now.”

“So maybe something,” Bernstein said.

“Maybe,” said Lynch.

Telling’s office was on the fourth floor, the hallway lined with tall wooden doors framing long pebbled-glass inserts, the doors all with the old-fashioned transom windows over the top. Old wood, old stone moldings. People would have said faded grandeur maybe twenty-five years ago, but it was still fading. Telling was in 412, “Douglas Telling, Immigration Law” stenciled on the window. The door was ajar; Lynch nudged it open.

Telling was behind a beat-up desk, wearing a dress shirt that was probably expensive when he bought it five or six years ago. Tie on, hanging down, collar open. First impression, the place was a mess, but as Lynch looked at it he realized it was just full of files. Files piled on the desk, files stacked on the metal shelves along the right wall, files lined up on the floor.

Telling looked up. “So you’re the cops?”

“Kate Magnus gave us your name,” said Lynch.

“About Membe?”

“Yeah,” said Lynch.

“And you think this ties in to Stein somehow?” Telling asked.

“It might,” Lynch said. “We’re checking.”

“And that’s why you’re here, because otherwise Membe’s just another dead nigger, and not even a citizen nigger, right?”

The fire again. Lynch turned his palms up. “I do something to piss you off?”

“Didn’t have to,” Telling said. “I wake up that way.”

“Think maybe you can give it a rest for a minute, so we can get through this?”

Telling nodded. “Fine.”

“You handled the immigration work on Membe?”

“Yeah.”

“Anything in his file you think might have followed him over here?”

Telling snorted. “You’ve got no fucking clue, do you? If Membe got killed over there, it wouldn’t be because he was Membe. It would be the West African version of roadkill – just mean he stepped out in front of the bullet. You guys and your motives and shit. Most of this world, you don’t need a reason to get dead. Could be his great-grandfather looked sideways at some asshole’s great-grandmother sixty years ago, and the asshole was in the wrong tribe. Could be one of Taylor’s former punks was sitting in a bar and couldn’t remember whether he had a round in the chamber, so he takes the shot to find out because it’s easier than pulling the bolt back and checking. Could be anything at all, but whatever it was would be some dumb-ass trivial bullshit. People don’t follow refugees across the Atlantic to kill them over dumb-ass trivial bullshit. They just kill whoever else is handy.”

“So why’d he get asylum, then?” Bernstein asked.

“Because his life was in danger.”

“You make it sound like everybody’s life is in danger over there,” Lynch said.

“Everybody’s life is. But the sisters can’t get their hands on everybody. They get their hands on who they can. And they send me the files. And if I can find a way to make a case, then I make a case.”

“I thought asylum had to be based on a specific risk of persecution,” Bernstein said.

“You get a look at Membe’s right arm?”

Lynch nodded.

“That specific enough for you?”

“What I got from the ME, that was a few years ago,” Lynch said.

“You wanna get philosophical, then I’ll get philosophical. I don’t give a shit. I don’t care if it was two weeks, two years, or two decades ago. I work with a number of relief agencies, all over the world. They come to me with somebody who’s gonna die where they are and who maybe won’t if they come here and I can spin a way to open up the ol’ Golden Door, then I’m gonna go for it. Because the rich fuckers that run this country and the racist lemmings that spend their days listening to the bloviating yahoos on talk radio, they want to nail that door shut. Most of this world is a huge fucking cesspool that people shouldn’t have to live in. Most of this country isn’t.”

Little pause after that, not the kind of comment that invited a response.

“Didn’t you used to be with MacMillian?” Bernstein asked.

“Yeah. Up until 2004.”

“Kind of a change of pace,” Bernstein said.

“Always did some immigration stuff to help the firm hit its pro bono targets. I mean the pro bono stuff in a firm like that, mostly it’s a joke. Something we use to numb the consciences on the new associates until the work and the money suck out their souls. But I was a proper North Shore liberal. Had a couple million bucks worth of house up in Lake Forest, condo in Aspen, garage full of Beemers. Had a son. Then 9/11 happened, and my son decided to sign up for Bush’s jihad, probably mostly to rebel against me and my bullshit. And he got blown up. And my wife turned into one of these America-as-a-fetish Palin worshipers because it was the only way she had for his death to make sense. And I just couldn’t go into the office anymore and help another CFO find ways to run circles around the SEC. Because it occurred to me that my son, misguided as he was, stuck his ass out further for something than I ever had. So my wife got the house and condo and the Beemers and the money, and I got this.”

“Fair trade?” Lynch asked.

“Screw fair,” Telling said.

 

“This Membe Saturday looks like a dead end,” Bernstein said, him and Lynch back in the car.

“Something screwy, though. I mean, why shoot the guy? Because he saw the car? You got people parked all over there every game night. There’s no reason for the shooter to think anybody’d be looking at him.”

“But if it’s not about the shooter, then it’s about Stein. So now you’re wondering what some refugee has in common with Stein,” Bernstein said.

“And I feel kind of stupid wondering that,” Lynch said. They drove for a few moments. “Do me a favor, though, OK? We ever get a call out back to Telling’s office, let’s punt on it. Guy’s gonna eat a gun someday. I don’t need to see it.”

Bernstein’s phone went off, some kind of hip-hop crap.

“What the fuck is that?” Lynch asked.

“New ringtone,” Bernstein said. “Little Kanye. Upping my street cred.”

“Well, answer the damn thing before I put a round through it.”

 

CHAPTER 12