Hornet's Nest (35 page)

Mauney had flown to Charlotte from Asheville today, arriving at Charlotte-Douglas International Airport at five-thirty
P
.
M
. The return, for tomorrow afternoon, was not back to Asheville, but to Miami, and from there Mauney was flying to Grand Cayman in the West Indies. West carefully flipped through more tickets, her heart picking up, adrenaline coursing. He was scheduled to fly out of Grand Cayman on Wednesday and stop over in Miami for six hours. Then he would return to Charlotte and, finally, to Asheville. There were more disturbing signs that were likely unrelated to Mauney’s murder but pointed to other crime possibly surrounding his life.

This was always the bitter irony in such cases, she couldn’t help but think. Death ratted on people who were closet drug abusers, drunks, or having affairs with one and/ or the other sex, or those who liked to whip or be whipped or to string themselves up by pulleys and nooses and masturbate. Human creativity was endless, and West had seen it all. She had gotten out a ballpoint pen and was using it to turn pages of other paperwork. Though her forte was not cash and equivalents, treasury and agency securities, derivatives, investment banking, commercial and corporate banking, West knew enough to get a sense of what Mauney might have been intending on his travels.

In the first place, he had an alias, Jack Morgan, whose picture I.D.s on passport and driver’s license showed Mauney’s face. There were a total of eight credit cards and two checkbooks in the names of Mauney and Morgan. Both men seemed to have a keen interest in real estate, specifically a number of hotels along Miami Beach. It appeared to West that Mauney was prepared to invest some one hundred million dollars in these old pastel dumps. Why? Who the hell went to Miami Beach these days? West flipped through more paperwork, perspiring in the humid heat. Why was Mauney
planning to drop by Grand Cayman, the money-laundering capital of the world?

“My God,” West muttered, realizing that Grand Cayman was three syllables.

She stood up, staring at the bright skyline, at the mighty USBank Corporate Center rising above all, its red light slowly blinking a warning to helicopters and low flying planes. She stared at this symbol of economic achievement, of greatness and hard work on the part of many, and she got angry. West, like a lot of citizens, had checking and savings accounts at USBank. She had financed her Ford through it. Tellers were always pleasant and hardworking. They went home at the end of the day and did their best to make ends meet like most folks. Then some carpetbagger comes along and decides to cheat, steal, hoodwink, make out like a bandit, and give an innocent business and its people a bad name. West turned her attention to Hammer and motioned to her.

“Take a look,” West said quietly to her chief.

Hammer squatted by the open car door and examined documents without touching them. She had been making investments and saving money most of her life. She knew creative banking when she saw it and was shocked at first, then disgusted as truth began to whisper. As best she could tell, and of course none of it could be proven at this precise moment, it appeared Blair Mauney III was behind hundreds of millions of dollars loaned to Dominion Tobacco that seemed to be linked to a real-estate development group called Southman Corporation in Grand Cayman. Associated with this were multiple bank account numbers not linked by identification numbers. Several of the same Miami telephone numbers showed up repeatedly, with no description other than initials that made no sense. There were references to something called
USChoice
.

“What do you think?” West whispered to Hammer.

“Fraud, for starters. We’ll get all this to the FBI, to Squad Four, see what they make of it.”

The news helicopter circled low. The cocooned body was loaded into the ambulance.

“What about Cahoon?” West asked.

Hammer took a deep breath, feeling sorry for him. How much bad news did anybody need in one night? “I’ll call him, tell him what we suspect,” she grimly said.

“Do we release Mauney’s I.D. tonight?”

“I’d rather hold out until morning.” Hammer was staring beyond bright lights and crime-scene tape. “I believe you have a visitor,” she said to West.

Brazil was at the perimeter taking notes. He was not in uniform this night, and his face was hard as his eyes met West’s and held. She walked toward him, and they moved some distance away from others and stood on different sides of crime-scene tape.

“We’re not releasing any information tonight,” she said to him.

“I’ll just do my usual,” he said, lifting the tape to duck under.

“No.” She blocked him. “We can’t let anybody in. Not on this one.”

“Why not?” he said, stung.

“There are a lot of complications.”

“There always are.” His eyes flashed.

“I’m sorry,” she told him.

“I’ve been inside before,” he protested. “How come now I can’t?”

“You’ve been inside when you’ve been with me.” West began to back away.

“When I’ve . . . ?” Brazil’s pain was almost uncontainable. “I am with you!”

West looked around and wished he would lower his voice. She could not tell him what she had found inside the victim’s car and what it quite likely implied about the not-so-innocent victim Blair Mauney III. She glanced back at Hammer. The chief was still leaning inside the Lincoln, looking through more paperwork, perhaps grateful for the distraction from her own private tragedies. West thought of Brazil’s behavior at her house while Raines was watching the videotape. This was a mess, and it could not go on. She made the right decision and could feel the change inside her, the curtain dropping. The end.

“You can’t do this to me!” Brazil furiously went on. “I haven’t done anything wrong!”

“Please don’t make a scene or I’m going to have to ask you to leave,” West, the deputy chief, stated.

Enraged and hurt, Brazil realized the truth. “You’re not going to let me ride with you anymore.”

West hesitated, trying to ease him into this. “Andy,” she said, “it couldn’t go on forever. You’ve always known that. Jesus Christ.” She blew out in frustration. “I’m old enough to. . .I’m. . .”

Brazil backed up, staring at her, the traitor, the fiend, the hard-hearted tyrant, the worst villain ever to touch his life. She didn’t care about him. She never had.

“I don’t need you,” he cruelly said.

Brazil wheeled around and ran. He ran as fast as he could back to his BMW.

“Oh for God’s sake,” West exclaimed as Hammer suddenly was at her side.

“Problem?” Hammer stared after Brazil, her hands in her pockets.

“More of the same.” West wanted to kill him. “He’s going to do something.”

“Good deduction.” Hammer’s eyes were sad and tired, but she was full of courage and support for the living.

“I’d better go after him.” West started walking.

Hammer stood where she was, strobing lights washing over her face as she watched West duck reporters and trot off to her car. Hammer thought about new love, about people crazy for each other and not knowing it as they fought and ran off and chased. The ambulance beeped as it backed up, carrying away what was left of a person whom Hammer, in truth, did not feel especially sorry for at this point. She would never have wished such horrendous violence upon him, but what a piece of shit he was, stealing, hurting, and more than likely perpetuating the drug trade. Hammer was going to take this investigation into her own hands, and if need be, make an example of Blair Mauney III, who had planned to screw the bank and a hooker during the same trip.

“People die the way they lived,” she commented to Detective Brewster, patting his back.

“Chief Hammer.” He was loading new film in his camera. “I’m sorry about your husband.”

“So am I. In more ways than you’ll ever know.” She ducked under the tape.

Brazil must have been speeding again, or perhaps he was hiding in another alleyway. West cruised West Trade Street, looking for his old BMW. She checked her mirrors, seeing no sign of him, the scanner a staccato of more problems in the city. She picked up the portable phone and dialed the number for Brazil’s desk at the
Observer
. After three rings, it rolled over to another desk and West hung up. She fumbled for a cigarette and turned onto Fifth Street, checking cars driven by men checking the late night market. West whelped her siren and flashed her lights, messing with those up to no good. She watched hookers and sh’ims scatter as potential clients sped away.

“Stupid bastards,” West muttered, flicking an ash out the window. “Is it worth dying for?” she yelled at them.

Cahoon lived in Myers Park on Cherokee Place, and his splendid brick mansion was only partly lit up because its owner and his wife and youngest daughter had gone to bed. This did not deter Hammer in the least. She was about to do a decent thing for the CEO and great benefactor of the city. Hammer rang the doorbell, her fabric worn in places she had not known she had. She felt an emptiness, a loneliness that was frightening in its intensity. She could not bear to go home and walk past places Seth had sat, lain, walked, or rummaged through. She did not want to see remnants of a life no more. His favorite coffee mug. The Ben & Jerry’s Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough ice cream he’d never had a chance to eat. The antique sterling-silver letter opener he had given her the Christmas of 1972, still on the desk in her study.

Cahoon heard the bell from his master suite upstairs, where his view above sculpted boxwoods and old magnolia trees included his building encrusted with jewels and topped by a crown. He threw back fine monogrammed sheets, wondering who on earth would dare to drop by his home at this obscene hour. Cahoon went to the Aiphone on the wall and picked up the receiver. He was startled to see Chief Hammer on the video monitor.

“Judy?” he said.

“I know it’s late, Sol.” She looked into the camera and spoke over the intercom. “But I need to talk to you.”

“Is everything all right?” Alarmed, he thought of his children. He knew Rachael was in bed. But his two older sons could be anywhere.

“I’m afraid not,” Hammer told him.

Cahoon grabbed his robe from the bedpost and flung it around himself. His slippers patted along the endless antique Persian runner covering the stairs. His index finger danced over the burglar alarm keypad, turning off glass breakers, motion sensors, contacts in all windows and doors, and bypassing his vault and priceless art collection, which were in separate wings and on separate systems. He let Hammer in. Cahoon squinted in the glare of bright lights that blazed on whenever anything more than a foot tall moved within a six-foot radius of his house. Hammer did not look good. Cahoon could not imagine why the chief was out so early in the morning so soon after her husband’s sudden death.

“Please come in,” he said, wide awake now and more gentle than usual. “Can I get you a drink?”

She followed him into the great room, where he repaired to the bar. Hammer had been inside Cahoon’s mansion but once, at a splendid party complete with a string quartet and huge silver bowls filled with jumbo shrimp on ice. The CEO liked English antiques and collected old books with beautiful leather covers and marbled pages.

“Bourbon,” Hammer decided.

That sounded good to Cahoon, who was on a regimen of no fat, no alcohol, and no fun. He might have a double, straight up, no ice. He pulled the cork out of a bottle of
Blanton’s Kentucky single barrel and didn’t bother with the monogrammed cocktail napkins his wife liked so much. He knew he needed to be medicated because Hammer wasn’t here to hand him good news.
Dear Lord, don’t let anything bad have happened to either of the boys.
Did a day go by when their father didn’t worry about their partying and flying through life in their sports cars or Kawasaki one-hundred horsepower Jet Skis?

Please let them be okay and I promise I’ll be a better person
Cahoon silently prayed.

“I heard on the news about your . . .” he started to say.

“Thank you. He had so much amputated, Sol.” Hammer cleared her throat. She sipped bourbon and was soothed by its heat. “He wouldn’t have had a quality of life, had they been able to clear up the disease. I’m just grateful he didn’t suffer any more than he did.” She typically looked on the bright side as her heart trembled like something wounded and afraid.

Hammer had not and could not yet accept that when the sun rose this morning and each one after the next, there would be silence in her house. There would be no night sounds of someone rattling in cupboards and turning on the TV. She would have no one to answer or report to, or call when she was late or not going to make it home for dinner, as usual. She had not been a good wife. She had not even been a particularly good friend. Cahoon was struck speechless by the sight of this mighty woman in tears. She was trying hard to muster up that steely control of hers, but her spirit simply could not take it. He got up from his leather wing chair and dimmed the sconces on dark mahogany that he had salvaged from a sixteenth-century Tudor manor in England. He went to her and sat on the ottoman, taking one of her hands.

“It’s all right, Judy,” he kindly said, and he felt like crying, too. “You have every right to feel this way, and you go right on. It’s just us, you and me, two human beings in this room right now. Who we are doesn’t matter.”