Shattered Trust (20 page)

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Authors: Leslie Esdaile Banks

BOOK: Shattered Trust
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It was implicit in the will before her. The knowledge that justice wasn't always just bound two unlikely strangers ... creating a slowly rising bile within them to play the roles defined by polite society, but to also always attempt to beat the system by any means necessary. . . and the strange alliance left them both laughing that they'd bested the Southern confederacy in white-face masks; Haines laughing the loudest by always helping a friend that he owed for not knowing what he should have been aware of while younger.
Now she understood.
An offshore mortgage company set up in the Grand Cayman's, before it was fashionable. No wonder the Russians knew where to look for her, digging for answers. Xavier Mortgage, funded by the one-two punch of Haines's white privilege and Xavier Hewitt's black power. Mortgages to disenfranchised people down in the French Quarter, the Ninth Ward, along the Gulf, Biloxi, Slidell, Port Arthur, Gullah country Geechie Islands, plus cheap land in Jamaica before tourism caught on ... triple digit millions—it was too much land to eminently domain in the wide public eye, and much more land than anyone ever expected black hands to ever hold.
If people defaulted on their mortgages, Xavier Mortgage, a privately held concern, owned the properties and lots. But knowing Akhan, he'd never call in the markers, even if the insurance companies found a way to slide out of rebuilding people's homes in good faith. The insurance companies could renege all they wanted. He'd still own a good chunk of a port city that brought in one-fifth of the nation's crude oil, as well as twenty-percent of America's goods and services into the belly of the beast.
If Akhan offered amnesty like he would, he'd set a glaring example for other lenders, causing riot, and the poorest folks in the region could still have their land; while wealthier folks would be held hostage by their angry, bigger banks. Poetic justice. No wonder the feds were worried and wanted to find this critical document that allowed so much to hang in the balance. Akhan's brother, her grandfather, had been lynched years ago, but he was in an inarguable position to financially lynch a fair section of Dixie land.
Her uncle had said that X marked the spot. Xavier marked a very big spot in a place that was supposed to be washed away. Laura closed her eyes. They knew the levees were gonna break decades before they de-funded infrastructure building projects. They knew a category-three hurricane was coming and was only a matter of time.
Legislation maneuvers tracked like the pending level-five storm—relentless, unstoppable, and unforgiving. Bankruptcy laws had been amended at a time when the financial levees around small businesses and homeowners were crumbling, making it easier for banks to foreclose and snatch land. Mercenaries were keeping the peace—contractors in arms. The rebuilding was too sweet to leave to old local Italian families; this was an international Mardis Gras, so the Russians had been invited into the party.
Two old freedom fighters were in the mix, one dead and probably laughing his Main Line ass off, the other smiling contently in the U.S. Embassy in Jamaica, knowing that the third party on the company docs was already dead—Lillian Braithwaite, Brother B's sister, not wife. The woman in the pictures, gorgeous, smiling, with babies all around her ... Akhan's second family, his home away from home in the Caribbean.
Oval-framed, yellow-edged photos from home abroad blazed a white poker of awareness into Laura's skull as she read. And all of the weight of Xavier Mortgage was left in the nimble control of his very educated, very shrew, financially deadly grand niece—her.
Yes, things had come full circle, now it made so much sense why Haines had always shielded her under his wing, and why her uncle insisted that she learn business and politics to the bone. She also now thoroughly understood why she had a target on her forehead.
She laughed and closed her eyes, allowing tears to stream down her cheeks in release. Back in the day, old Alan Moyer, while still friends with Haines, had even drawn up Akhan's will pro bono. It was so outrageous it was absurd. The fox guarding the hen house, but the chickens almost pecked the fox to death when they came home to roost. Had her uncle predeceased Donald Haines, she and Haines would have been business partners. In Haines's last, controversial will change, rather than have his portion go to his estate to be squabbled over by Elizabeth and his son, he'd remanded his interest in Xavier to any living members of the partnership? Deep.
Laura reread the documents, incredulous. Akhan had left his entire portfolio of Xavier in her hands, should he die, and gave her current power of attorney over the section that Donald had willed back to him, trusting that she'd know what to do with it.
But had Akhan's long-time common-law wife survived severe diabetes, she could have amended the partnership agreement so that her children in the islands would have inherited not only her small house in Kingston and the land Brother B claimed by family eminent domain, but half of the Gulf region, to be shared with Najira and Jamal upon the last surviving partner's demise.
The will was iron-clad. No surviving heirs could manage or run Xavier except the three original partners. . . the loophole was the section that Donald Haines, Sr., had ceded to Akhan and had given his sign-off on, while in his clear and present mind that, Laura could stand in his stead. Wild.
Laura's hands trembled as she flipped through the pages of dense legalese. That's what nearly put a bullet in both her and her uncle's skulls. That's what had legislators scrambling for defensive postures, in case word of this got out and unhinged all their side deals. That's what had developers protecting their turfs. This was all supposed to be an easy, clean sweep to get poor folks out of the way after the big storm so the fat cats could come back in, rebuild bigger and better, and re-gentrify without anything or anyone getting in the way of their redevelopment plans.
True, they'd been pissed off about the lost lands in urban Philly empowerment zones ... but what they stood to lose control of in the French Quarter was the real showstopper. They'd literally pulled out the big guns. And yet, if it hadn't been for an act of God, pure mother nature rising up and blowing hard ... all of this would have been moot. Business as usual would have gone on in the Bayou.
But the only one who knew for sure just how bad the situation was, also just so happened to be the man who'd drafted the will—Alan Moyer. He knew what was at stake, had a personal grudge about his son being imprisoned, which she'd personally confirmed. He had the contacts, the money, and Elizabeth Haines was just a pawn. Moreover, he wanted everything ceded away by Haines given back, worse than any of the others. It went beyond money; this was a power thing going on. It was in Moyer's eyes, and the moves she'd been tracking. Now the trick was going to be how to pin it on the rat bastard. She couldn't get them all, but she had to at least get the main one who'd probably sanctioned the hits.
“You want some tea?” James asked quietly, stepping into her office.
Startled, Laura placed her hand over her heart and stopped breathing for a moment. She looked up at him, too awed and overwhelmed to immediately speak. Finally, she nodded. “Sure, sweetheart. Thanks.”
Chapter 20
A
lan Moyer approached the condominium complex walkway, seething. How
dare
that spoiled, high-society whore bail on him. He straightened his crimson and navy rep tie, then brushed dandruff from the shoulders of his charcoal, Brooks Brothers suit as he entered the glass-enclosed lobby and waited for the doorman to call up to Elizabeth Haines's unit.
“Sir, you may go up. Mrs. Haines has opened the elevator from her side with the key, just press her floor. Have a nice visit,” the doorman said calmly, and ushered Moyer with a mannerly wave toward the exclusive banks of elevators that opened directly into unit foyers.
Moyer stared at the numbers as they climbed, feeling his blood pressure spike ever higher with rage as he kept his line of vision trained on the moving lights. When he strode off the elevator, Elizabeth took one glance at his expression and gasped, and then stepped back from him.
“Alan, I don't want to fight or argue,” she said, clasping and unclasping her pearls as she walked away from him.
“We are not going to fight,” he said between his teeth, measuring his tone. “But we
are
going to have a conversation that will stop this bullshit once and for all.”
“Must you be so vulgar?”
He just stared at her for a moment to stabilize his emotions. If she knew how hard it was for men like him to climb out of the gutter, to earn true respect, to shed the disgrace he'd grown up with as an immigrant to impoverished parents ... she had no concept within her privileged, snide, self-possessed little world.
She smoothed her hands over her taupe-hued cardigan and he watched her go to the living room bar. “I wish you wouldn't have come, if you're going to be unpleasant.”
He watched her take a painfully long time fixing herself a martini and then splashing Scotch on the rocks for him. Still as beautiful and as stupid as ever, he thought, appraising the way her taupe and herringbone tweed pants clung to her exquisite figure. Why she had chosen an idiot like Sutherland to be unfaithful with was still an enigma to him.
She pushed a short wisp of silky blond hair behind her ear and handed him a drink as a semi-contrite peace offering. He liked her hair better long, and wanted to throw the drink in her face, but sipped it instead. Unpleasant ... she didn't know the half of what he could be.
“Under any circumstances, Liz, I deserved more than an e-mail telling me you've decided to decline taking the position as executive director of Micholi.” He watched her move to the window and lean against it, coolly sipping her drink. “I have spent the
entire
day in damage control meetings. Now this?”
“To parrot your phraseology,
under the circumstances,
Alan, can you blame me? What did you expect?”
“Loyalty,” he said, glaring at her and taking a deep swig of Scotch. “Let's start there. Let's go back to—”
“Oh, let's
not
go back to the beginning and the good old days. It's boring,” she snapped, sloshing her drink. “Donald is dead. I served my sentence living with him for years.”
“And I did my sentence with you both, always making sure you could plot against him without notice, and kept all your dirty little secrets, including the affair with Sutherland. Am I wrong?”
“For that, I thank you,” she said, raising her martini glass to him from across the room.
“Elizabeth, we're in a very delicate transitional period. Right now—”
“People have died,” she said, her tone becoming shrill. “Scott, his boy, and then Polanski, Devereaux, and
his wife
. Are you mad, Alan? I don't want to be a party to anyone's death. I don't wish to be associated—”
“You were a party to your own husband's death,” he said evenly, swirling his drink around so the ice could further chill it. “You wished that, and Sutherland made it so. I think we're splitting hairs on morality and involvement.”
She began to walk in a tight circle, sloshing her drink as she spoke and gesturing wildly. “But look at all the people who've died. For what? Money? Now George has gone missing for days, along with his wife and children.” She stopped her frenetic circling and stared at Alan hard. “What if that man is in the bottom of a river somewhere with his family?” she whispered, her eyes wide with terror. “I don't understand why Micholi even had to be involved with these, these Russian mobsters—scum of the earth!”
“Are you finished?” he asked calmly and set down his drink on the heavy, antique teakwood and jade coffee table before him. “Need I remind you that two hundred
billion
dollars have gone into the restoration of the Gulf alone? That's a developer's wet dream. Our friends in the overseas construction trades, who, by the way, get us into every conceivable foreign job as sub-contractors that they can wrangle ... so that we don't have to directly negotiate with tense governments in lands that have been torn apart down to the foundation by war or get into slow, bogged-down politics to win a bid offer distinct advantages. We are their friends, they get the prime contracts and we get to redevelop, design buildings, and put the planet back together one country at a time. All they asked for was the written-off sections of the cities we have influence in. Delivering on Philadelphia was becoming difficult, and they asked for—”
“I don't care what they asked for, or what they didn't get,” Elizabeth said, placing the heel of her palm to her forehead and closing her eyes. “I don't want to know any more of this, Alan. I want to stay as far removed from that sordid business as possible.”
“But you are already in it,” he said, his voice escalating as he paced toward her and then stopped himself from crossing the room.
“No. I won't be involved any longer. It was bad enough that I accepted messages from my ex-lover via strange and creepy individuals calling from, of all places, a penitentiary.” She walked closer to him, set her martini glass down on the table, and folded her arms to glare at him. “Me. Elizabeth Haines. Taking calls from a prison? Then, I accepted calls from your son, after what he did to my Donny ... do you know what he did to him?”
“We both know what the two of them did together, and it drove Donald out of his mind. However—”
“Don't make light of this, and don't patronize me. Just like you were willing to do everything for your son, I'm willing to do everything for mine. And the best thing I can think to do before this, this, virus of activity spreads to my good name and hurts Donny Jr. in any way is to divest my affiliation with everyone involved.”
“Too late, Liz. You already took the money, already benefited by positioning, and—”
“What?”
He held up his hand and pulled his vibrating cell phone off his belt. “Moyer here.” He looked at her with a threat to remain silent. She narrowed her gaze, but complied.
“Alanir Moyirveschi. Long time. Family should stay in close contact during difficult times, no?”
Alan Moyer cringed, feeling his face flash hot as a shiver ran down his spine upon hearing his birth name. “Long time,” he said quietly.
“I am concerned. Things I'm hearing are troubling to me. One family turned on another to gain your favor, and thus, a good man, Vladimir Chertoff, was lost. Then another good man was lost during a job for you in the Cayman Islands, because he got incorrect information from your people. Another good man is now in police custody.”
“That wasn't my fault,” Moyer shot back defensively.
“No, but it is getting gravely expensive to continue to keep all these men on the job, for something as minor as a small section of ghetto rebuilding in Philadelphia, and supposedly the poorer sections of New Orleans—which we are also hearing you do not control as we had supposed. Nasty rumor, I'm sure, but troubling, nonetheless. We thought we were talking about multimillion-dollar contracts for those two sites alone. But I am hearing things, Alanir. Bad things.”
“Nasty rumors,” Moyer said, picking up his drink with a trembling hand.
“See, this is what I told the families when we conferred. Things can easily get out of hand. Men should talk, share vodka, and then come away with an accord, no?”
“That is always best, to dispel rumors, and let cool heads prevail,” Alan said nervously.
“See ... even without vodka, we have agreement.” There was a pause and a long breath before the caller spoke again. “We are realists, Alanir. We know that we cannot compete for contracts in the areas where there will be more rigorous enforcement, like our Italian comrades have mastered. We leave those jobs to them. It isn't cost effective for us to build to complete perfect specifications. So, a slip here, a slip there, keeps our operations profitable. Building codes in other countries that aren't quite up to speed yet accept these realities. Sometimes buildings collapse, sometimes they lean, but they get built. Everyone is happy. But the U.S. contracts pay the best ... urban areas, otherwise known as your ghettos, do not enforce as heavily, and thus, we are again happy. Therefore, I must say that we are disappointed if these nasty lies and rumors are true.”
“There is no need for disappointment,” Moyer said, knocking back his drink and swallowing it with a wince. He set his glass down hard on the table and avoided Elizabeth's prying eyes.
“Correct this problem, is good advice from me, a good friend to you—who has always been a very good friend to me.” Another long pause raised the hair on Moyer's neck.
“We'll handle it,” Moyer assured him.
“But you see, somehow, the Italians took offense. This adds to our problem. They dispensed with one of your friends, a Doctor Sutherland. Then, as a good show of faith that we were not involved, the first family who had experienced the loss of Vladimir, explained by example that Polanski and Devereaux were sacrificial lambs. Those two should never have ordered a contractor to be removed from the job without a complete discussion first. As the one who is in charge, as the foreman, I bring this complaint to you. Therefore, we have an imbalance. Four men, plus one who may become nervous in custody, so we will have to address him—call it five. Oh, yes, and we began by showing our seriousness with our contract by taking care of a senator and his wayward son, both who had reneged on that which was due you.”
Moyer swallowed hard but couldn't speak. Sudden terror thickened his tongue.
A long sigh ensued before the caller spoke again. “You see, friend, the difficulty is that, this job, like many construction jobs that are ill planned and ill budgeted, just keeps growing with no end in sight, and we are trying to accommodate you, our client. But we were initially only contracted to remove two problems, a man and a woman, for specific remuneration. Now even that is in question. Troubling. We have cancelled the contract on them as a family, because things have become too exposed and too public. No more jobs like that, until our imbalance is satisfied.”
“Why
do you keep saying that your forthcoming contract is in question?” Moyer's gaze tore around Elizabeth's condo for answers, her horrified gaze adding to his growing terror.
“Do you not watch the news?”
“The news?”
“Put on your television. It is past four o'clock. Then you can call me back and explain our arrangement to me more clearly.”
The cell phone call went dead. Without looking at Elizabeth, Alan Moyer dashed to the flat-screen unit in her living room and began fumbling with the remote. “Put on the fucking television—how do you work this?”
“What happened?” she whispered, as though her voice was lodged in her throat.
“Put it on!” He yelled, throwing the remote at her.
She sidestepped the hurled electronic device that landed on the sofa and quickly punched the right button with a French-manicured nail. They both stood side by side, horrified, eyes wide. He turned to her and grabbed her by both arms.
“You, George, and I are all that's left in the inner circle! Don't you bail on me, Liz. You stay the course and this will blow over.”
“I don't need any more money. Donald left me enough to get by, he left me well off—”
“He didn't leave
us
well off, didn't leave
us
enough, you selfish bitch!” Moyer shouted, his face contorted as he shook Elizabeth hard, yanking her back and forth as he stared up at her blinded by fury.
“Dear God, Alan, let go of me! I'm not involved in this any longer, I swear I won't—”
Before she could finish her sentence, he shoved her hard and she lost her balance, falling backward into the coffee table. A loud crack rent the room, and she rolled over into a crumpled heap on the floor.
“Oh, my God, Elizabeth,” he whispered, staring at her glassy, dead blue eyes and the bloodied dent at her temple where the coffee table caught it.
Panicked, he rushed away from her body, and began pressing on the elevator call button like a madman. When the conveyance finally arrived, he dashed in, hit the lobby button and repeatedly pushed the
CLOSE DOOR
button, then ran deeper into the elevator, hid his face against the wall, and wept.

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