The Partner (6 page)

The victim of a fiery one-car collision, on a rural road with no witnesses, Patrick was laid to rest by his lovely wife Trudy on February 11, 1992. She was a striking widow, dressed in black Armani, and as they shoveled dirt onto his casket she was already spending the money.

His will left everything to her. It was simple and had been recently updated. Hours before the funeral mass, Trudy and Doug Vitrano had carefully opened the lockbox in Patrick’s office and inventoried the contents. They found the will, two car tides, the deed to the Lanigan home, a life insurance policy in the amount of half a million dollars that Trudy knew about, and another policy for two million that she’d never heard of.

Vitrano had quickly scanned the unexpected policy. It had been purchased by Patrick eight months earlier. Trudy was the sole beneficiary. The same company had sold both policies, and it was huge and solvent.

She swore she knew nothing about it, and the smile on her face convinced Vitrano she was genuinely shocked. Funeral or no funeral, Trudy was quite thrilled about her good fortune. With her pain eased considerably, she somehow managed to suffer through the funeral service and burial without a serious breakdown.

The life insurance company balked, as they all do initially, but Vitrano made sufficient threats to force payment. Four weeks after the burial, Trudy got her two and a half million.

A week later, she was driving a red Rolls-Royce
around Biloxi, and people began to hate her. Then the ninety million vanished in thin air, and the rumors got started.

Perhaps she wasn’t a widow.

Patrick was the first suspect, and eventually the only one. The gossip grew vicious, so Trudy loaded her small daughter and her boyfriend, Lance, a holdover from high school, into the red Rolls and fled to Mobile, an hour east of Biloxi. She found a slick lawyer who gave her lots of advice on how to protect the money. She bought a beautiful old home in Point Clear, overlooking Mobile Bay, and put it in Lance’s name.

Lance was a strong, handsome loser she’d first slept with at the age of fourteen. He’d been convicted of smuggling pot at nineteen, and spent three years in prison while she was having a wonderful time at college, playing cheerleader and seducing football players, a legendary party girl who also managed to graduate with honors. She married a wealthy fraternity boy, and divorced him after two years. Then she enjoyed the single life for a few years until she met and married Patrick, a promising young lawyer who was new to the Coast. Their courtship had been long on passion and short on planning.

Through college, both marriages, and various short careers, Trudy had always kept Lance nearby. He was an addiction, a strapping, lusty boy she could never get enough of. She knew when she was fourteen that she would never be without Lance.

Lance opened the door, bare-chested, black hair pulled back tightly into the obligatory ponytail, a large diamond earring in the left lobe. He sneered at Cutter as he sneered at the world, and didn’t say a word.

“Is Trudy in?” Cutter asked.

“Maybe.”

The badge flashed, and for a second the sneer vanished. “Agent Cutter, FBI. I’ve talked to her before.”

Lance imported marijuana from Mexico with a large, fast boat Trudy had purchased for him. He sold the pot to a gang in Mobile. Business was slow because the DEA was asking questions.

“She’s in the gym,” Lance said, nodding past Cutter. “What do you want?”

Cutter ignored him and walked across the drive to a converted garage where the music was booming. Lance followed.

Trudy was in the midst of a high-level aerobics challenge being dictated to her by a supermodel on a large-screen TV at one end of the room. She bounced and gyrated and mouthed the words to a nameless song, and looked damned good doing it. Tight yellow spandex. Tight blond ponytail. Not an ounce of fat anywhere. Cutter could’ve watched for hours. Even her sweat was cute.

She did this two hours a day. At thirty-five, Trudy still looked like everybody’s high school sweetheart.

Lance hit a switch and the video stopped. She twirled, saw Cutter, and gave him a look that would melt cheese. “Do you mind?” she snapped at Lance. Evidently, this workout was not to be disturbed.

“I’m Special Agent Cutter, FBI,” he said, whipping
out his badge and walking to her. “We met once before, a few years back.”

She dabbed her face with a towel, a yellow one that matched the spandex. She was hardly breathing.

She flashed perfect teeth, and everything was okay. “What can I do for you?” Lance stood beside her. Matching ponytails.

“I have some wonderful news for you,” Cutter said with a broad smile.

“What?”

“We’ve found your husband, Mrs. Lanigan, and he’s alive.”

A slight pause as it registered. “Patrick?” she said.

“He would be the one.”

“You’re lying,” Lance sneered.

“Afraid not. He’s in custody in Puerto Rico. Should make it back here in a week or so. Just thought you should hear the good news before we release it to the press.”

Stunned and staggering, she backed away and sat on a workout bench next to a weight machine. Her glistening bronze flesh was growing pale. Her pliant body was crumbling. Lance scurried to help her. “Oh my God,” she kept mumbling.

Cutter threw a card in front of them. “Call me if I can be of any help.” They said nothing as he left.

It was obvious to him that she held no anger at having been duped by a man who faked his death. Nor was there the smallest hint of joy at his return. No relief whatsoever at the end of an ordeal.

There was nothing but fear; the horror of losing the money. The life insurance company would sue immediately.

While Cutter was in Mobile, another agent from the Biloxi office went to the home of Patrick’s mother in New Orleans, and delivered the same news. Mrs. Lanigan was overcome with emotion, and begged the agent to sit for a while and answer questions. He stayed for an hour but had few answers for her. She cried for joy, and after he left she spent the rest of the day calling friends with the wonderful news that her only child was alive after all.

Six

Jack Stephano was arrested by the FBI in his D.C. office. He spent thirty minutes in jail, then was rushed to a small courtroom in the federal courthouse where he faced a U.S. Magistrate in a closed hearing. He was informed that he would be released immediately on his own recognizance, that he couldn’t leave the area, and that he would be watched by the FBI around the clock. While he was in court, a small army of agents entered his office, seized virtually every file, and sent the employees home.

After being dismissed by the Magistrate, Stephano was driven to the Hoover Building on Pennsylvania Avenue where Hamilton Jaynes was waiting. When the two were alone in Jaynes’ office, the Deputy Director offered a lukewarm apology for the arrest. But he had no choice. You can’t snatch a federal fugitive, drug him, torture him, and damned near kill him without being charged with something.

The issue was the money. The arrest was the leverage. Stephano swore Patrick had told them nothing.

As they spoke, the doors to Stephano’s office were being chained shut and ominous federal bulletins were being taped to the windows. His home phones were being bugged while Mrs. Stephano played bridge.

After the brief and fruitless meeting with Jaynes, he was dropped off near the Supreme Court. Since he’d been ordered to stay away from his office, he flagged a cab and told the driver to go to the Hay-Adams Hotel, corner of H and Sixteenth. He sat in traffic, calmly reading a newspaper, occasionally rubbing the tracking device they’d sewn in the hem of his jacket when they booked him. It was called a tracing cone, a tiny but powerful transmitter used to monitor movements of people, packages, even automobiles. He’d frisked himself while chatting with Jaynes, and had been tempted to rip out the cone and toss it on his desk.

He was an expert at surveillance. He stuffed his jacket under the seat of the cab, and walked quickly into the Hay-Adams Hotel, across from Lafayette Park. There were no rooms, he was told. He asked to see the manager, a former client, and within minutes Mr. Stephano was escorted to a suite on the fourth floor, with a splendid view of the White House. He stripped to his socks and shorts and carefully placed each item of clothing on the bed where he examined and even caressed every inch of fabric. He ordered lunch. He called his wife, but there was no answer.

Then he called Benny Aricia, his client, the man whose ninety million got diverted just minutes after it had arrived at the bank in Nassau. Aricia’s take was to have been sixty million, with thirty going to his lawyers,
Bogan and Vitrano and the rest of those filthy crooks in Biloxi. But it had vanished, just before it reached Benny.

He was at the Willard Hotel, also near the White House, hiding and waiting to hear from Stephano.

They met an hour later at the Four Seasons Hotel in Georgetown, in a suite Aricia had just reserved for a week.

Benny was almost sixty, but looked ten years younger. He was lean and bronze, with the perpetual tan of an affluent South Florida retiree who played golf every day. He lived in a condo on a canal with a Swedish woman who was young enough to be his daughter.

When the money was stolen, the law firm owned an insurance policy covering fraud and theft by its partners and employees. Embezzlement is common in law firms. The policy, sold by Monarch-Sierra Insurance Company, had a limit of four million dollars, payable to the firm. Aricia sued the law firm with a vengeance. His lawsuit demanded sixty million; all that he was entitled to.

Because there was little else to collect, and because the firm was about to run to bankruptcy court, Benny had settled for the four million paid by Monarch-Sierra. He’d spent almost half of that searching for Patrick. The fancy condo in Boca had cost a half a million. Other expenditures here and there, and Benny was down to his last million.

He stood in the window and sipped decaffeinated coffee. “Am I going to be arrested?” he asked.

“Probably not. But I’d keep low anyway.”

Benny placed his coffee on the table and sat across
from Stephano. “Have you talked to the insurance companies?” he asked.

“Not yet. I’ll call later. You guys are safe.”

Northern Case Mutual, the life insurance company which had made Trudy rich, had secretly set aside half a million for the search. Monarch-Sierra had put up a million. In all, Stephano’s little consortium had pledged and spent over three million dollars in the hunt for Patrick.

“Any luck with the girl?” Aricia asked.

“Not yet. Our people are in Rio. They found her father, but he wouldn’t talk. Same at her law firm. She’s out of town on business, they say.”

Aricia folded his hands and calmly said, “Now tell me, what exactly did he say?”

“I haven’t heard the tape yet. It was supposed to be delivered to my office this afternoon, but now things are complicated. Plus, it was sent from the jungles of Paraguay.”

“I know that.”

“According to Guy, he broke after five hours of shock. He said the money was still intact, hidden in various banks, none of which he could name. Guy damned near killed him when he couldn’t, or wouldn’t, name the banks. By then, Guy figured, correctly, that someone else had control of the money. A few more jolts, and the girl’s name came out. Guy’s men immediately called Rio, and confirmed her identity. She had already vanished.”

“I want to hear that tape.”

“It’s brutal, Benny. The man’s skin is burning and he’s screaming for mercy.”

Benny couldn’t stop the smile. “I know. That’s what I want to hear.”

They put Patrick at the end of a wing on the base hospital. His was the only room with doors which could be locked from the outside and windows that wouldn’t open. The blinds were closed. Two military guards sat outside the hallway, for whatever reason.

Patrick wasn’t going anywhere. The voltage had severely bruised the muscles and tissue in his legs and chest. Even his joints and bones were tender. The burns had laid open his flesh in four places, two on his chest, one on his thigh, one on his calf. Four other spots were being treated as second-degree burns.