Thief (47 page)

“We paid, but it evidently wasn't done,” Saunders said.

“When did you find out?” the mogul demanded.

“Last night,” he said. “An attorney I know in Buenos Aires sent me a video of Sister Rachel alive and well last week. And Vargas, the guy we paid to take her and … you know … he's long gone.”

“How much we out?”

“Nine hundred and fifty grand,” Saunders said.

“But there's nothing that links us to her, right?”

“When I clean, I clean.”

Arsenault thought about that, said, “What about the thief?”

“Nothing,” he said. “Santos and her people are back working in Rio, but Monarch hasn't been seen or heard from since that night in Manaus.”

These were both unfortunate circumstances as far as Arsenault was concerned. He still believed that if Santos published her research, it was averse to his portfolio. And the thief's disappearance bothered him. He didn't like loose ends.

“Hormel and Pynchon?” he asked.

Saunders nodded. “I learned through intermediaries that they are still nervous Monarch might come after them, but as of yesterday they were alive and healthy.”

The limo pulled into the turnaround at the Drake.

“That it?” Arsenault asked.

“The rest can wait, Beau,” Saunders said. “Enjoy your treat.”

The mogul raised an eyebrow, grinned, and climbed out.

Life
was
good, Arsenault decided once again, nodding to the doorman and entering the hotel. He'd have a little taste of cocoa. Hell, he'd have a chocoholic's feast, and then some quality time with Little Beau and Sophia, both of who would be waiting at the jet. Do the boy some good to be away from his spineless father. Dear Louisa would have a late dinner for them at the plantation. And he and his grandson would go bass fishing in the morning. It was all good.

The concierge sprang to his feet the moment Arsenault caught his eye. He rushed over, said, “Mr. Arsenault, how good to see you.”

“The key?”

“Yes,” he beamed. “The manager upgraded you to the presidential suite. And your visitor has already arrived.”

All good. All very, very good.

Arsenault plucked the key from the concierge's hand, said, “No need to explain the suite's accommodations. I've stayed there before.”

“Very good, sir,” the concierge said to the tycoon's back.

In the elevator Arsenault used the key to unlock the penthouse floor. As it rose, he studied himself in the mirror with a sly smile. He had the world by the balls, beholden to no man or nation, a creator of his universe, a God of investment, a visionary with guts. And in a few minutes, at age fifty-three, no less, he would be a stud courtesy of the little blue pill he popped in his mouth as the elevator slowed and the doors opened into the oval anteroom of the suite.

There was a large flower arrangement in a massive vase on a pedestal at the center of the entry, but Arsenault paid it no mind as he hurried toward music playing deeper in the suite, piano music, a sad, tender melody beautifully played.

The tycoon quickened his pace and emerged into a dramatic living area with floor-to-ceiling glass windows facing Lake Michigan, furniture arranged around a flat-screen television on the wall, and, in the far corner, a Steinway grand where a lovely figured cocoa-skinned woman sat with her back to him, her hands coaxing wistful notes from the keys. She wore hair extensions that hid her face, and a white cable-knit sweater with a loose neck that revealed tension when she stopped playing.

“Janelle?” Arsenault said. “I didn't know you were so good at the piano.”

“She's not,” said Cassie Knox, who turned to face him.

“Cassie?” the mogul said, coming up short and hardening. “Where's Janelle?”

Knox rubbed at the tears on her cheeks with the underside of her sleeve, laughed harshly and said, “I scared her. She's not coming.”

“What the hell have you—?”

“You did it, just like you said you would.”

“What?”

“Ruined me,” the singer said. “Destroyed whatever reputation I had. For what?”

Arsenault hated scenes like this, and abhorred scorned women. He'd suffered a few of these hysterias before and—

“For what?” Knox shouted.

“Cassie, you destroyed yourself,” the tycoon sniffed. “I read all about it in the papers.”

“You read what you wanted written!” Knox shouted.

“I think you should leave now, Cassie,” Arsenault said, growing tired of the drama. “Or I'll call security.”

“No, you won't,” she said. “Someone showed me how you did it, smeared me in the press, destroyed my distribution, pulled my contracts, all of it.”

“Really,” he said, sounding bored. “And who might that have been?”

“Me,” said a male voice behind him.

Arsenault looked over his shoulder, and saw a man carrying a pistol loosely aimed in his direction. His eyes shot in panic to the gunman's face. He didn't recognize him at first. Then he did and felt rocked.

“We've spent the past few months taking a real hard look at you, Big Beau,” Monarch said. “Picked apart your financial records, rooted around in your computers, talked to people you've wronged over the years. Identified your habits. Your patterns. It's not a pretty picture once you get beyond the billions.”

“I don't know what you're talking about,” Arsenault said, feeling nauseous.

“No?” the thief said. “How about gourmet chocolate?”

The tycoon licked his dry lips, and said nothing.

“That's a deranged habit, right there, the work of a true sociopath,” Monarch said. “Acting the kind patron and mentor to women of color, all the while plotting to bed them, build them, and discard them. Does Louisa know of your serial sexual obsessions? Of just how low you'll go on a regular basis?”

Arsenault fought off the urge to puke. He'd always been more than discreet, yet he suspected that Louisa suspected. She seemed willing to tolerate his behavior as long as it was done at a distance and with discretion. What would she do if it were flung in her face like this? He flashed on that image of his wife up on the Mardis Gras float, high above the court jester whipping the aroused and deadly sin of lust.

“Your son-in-law Peter has been a great help to us,” Monarch said.

The mogul blinked. “What?”

“Despite the fact you're his son's grandfather and wife's father, he hates your guts,” Monarch said. “Saturday of Easter weekend? When you had too much Maker's Mark? Peter got your keys and rummaged around in your desk. He found that secret little diary you keep about your chocolate escapades, and copied it for us.”

The tycoon felt wobbly. Peter was a pussy. A coward. How had he—?

“I read all about myself, or at least what you saw as me,” Cassie Knox hissed. “‘Hot cocoa and cayenne' and all that. What will Louisa say? With her lily-white ass and ice-cold skin? Especially when she finds out you started cheating three months after you were married, about the same time you impregnated her with Sophia.”

Arsenault felt as if he had come out of woods he knew like the back of his hand, only to find himself on the rim of a vast, deep, and dark canyon.

“What do you want?” he asked bitterly. “How much?”

“It's not always about the money, Beau,” Monarch said.

The tycoon laughed caustically, said, “It's always about the money.”

Monarch shrugged, said, “Okay, how does four billion sound?”

“What?”

“Four billion dollars,” Monarch said.

When he saw Monarch was serious, he snorted, “That's absurd. At that point, I might as well just let Louisa divorce me.”

“Maybe this will change your mind,” the thief said, and called out, “Doctor?”

Behind Cassie Knox, one of the bedroom doors opened, and a stunningly beautiful woman with deep bronze skin stepped out wearing a blue skirt and white blouse, and carrying an iPad. She stood there, gazing at Arsenault with big brown eyes.

The tycoon found her breathtaking. In another place and time …

He looked at Monarch, said, “Who is she?”

“Dr. Estella Santos,” she said, “of the Vovo Institute in Rio de Janeiro.”

Time seemed to slow for several breaths as Arsenault tried to grasp the ramifications of her presence.

“Do you recognize her now?” Cassie Knox asked.

“No,” he said, trying to act puzzled. “I've never heard of her before in my life.”

Monarch said, “You know that's not true. You know all about her and her work.”

He fought the urge to scratch his neck, said, “Work?”

“On genealogy and longevity among the members of a primitive tribe called the Ayafal,” Santos said. “They live in the upper Amazon. Does that ring any bells?”

“No. You must be mistaken,” Arsenault said.

“You are deeply pathological,” Monarch said. “Even Billy Saunders thinks so.”

Santos turned the iPad and held it out for the mogul. There he was in the backseat of the limo coming across town, copping to all of it.

“Billy's been a great help,” Monarch went on. “Once we confronted him with the fact that he was part of a conspiracy to commit genocide, he started acting quick to save his own ass, and threw you overboard big time.”

Arsenault's jaw felt locked. Every joint in his body felt locked.

“Genocide?” he whispered. “Me? Never.”

“Bullshit,” Monarch said. “Saunders says you gave the order to Dokken to wipe out the tribe and Dr. Santos and her colleagues because having people live longer wasn't a good business proposition to you. That totally jibes with what I heard Dokken saying to you on the sat phone. I don't care who you are, that's genocide.”

“I'll fight that charge in court until the day I die,” Arsenault shot back. “And I'll see you destroyed along the way!”

The thief shook his head wearily. “You still think you're running your despicable life, don't you?”

Arsenault kept his chin high, glaring at him.

Monarch rubbed his right fist into the palm of his hand. “Taking Sister Rachel to leverage me was stupid. It was personal and it made me mad.”

The mogul sneered at him, “You stole from me. That was personal, too.”

Before Arsenault could move a muscle, the thief dropped the gun and flew at him, hit him with three quick blows to the face, breaking the mogul's nose and dropping him to his hands and knees.

Blood gushed from his nose as he groaned, “What the fuck? She's alive.”

Monarch grabbed his suit-coat collar, and jerked him back, exposing his neck. He got right down in Arsenault's face, said, “If she wasn't alive, I'd be crushing your larynx right now, and watching you suffocate while I stomped your nuts into pulp.”

“No, please,” Arsenault whimpered.

“But she is alive,” Monarch said, throwing him down. “And there are things you've done that are as bad or worse that ruining women's lives, or kidnapping, or genocide, things for which you must be punished in a very special way.”

Even through the swelling and the blood, the thief could see his confusion.

“You were brilliant at hiding your participation in the abduction of Secretary of State Agnes Lawton last year,” Monarch said. “But we found enough to reach out to her quietly and show her how you conspired against her and the United States of America.”

“I did no such thing,” Arsenault shouted, trying to get up.

“You did,” Monarch said, and drove a boot to his stomach.

The mogul fell on his side, retching, and gasping for air. “No.”

“Yes,” the thief said. “As we speak, the FBI is raiding both your homes, and your offices in New Orleans, New York, and around the world. They'll find what we didn't, and then, Big Beau? You're going down for treason. They'll drag your name through the mud, publicly and with no mercy. In the end, I personally hope they stick you in front of a firing squad.”

Stricken, the mogul shrank from Monarch as if he were some angel of damnation.

“And you know the best part?” Monarch went on, almost taunting him. “The one that will really get to you? This morning Cassie and your son-in-law, Peter Solomon, as well as a group of all the women you've wronged put millions of dollars I lent them into the futures and options markets. We used every instrument at our disposal to benefit from the hammering your company's stock is going to take once you're led out of here in handcuffs. I figure we'll be taking four billion from you. Maybe more. And most of it is going to a charitable foundation that will be run by Sister Rachel for the benefit of the poor and indigenous people like the Ayafal.”

“No!” Arsenault bellowed as if gored. “You can't do that! Give it to fucking cavemen and orphans?”

Monarch laughed harshly. “Of course I can. I'm a thief. I can do anything I want.”

 

62

IN A LOUNGE AT
a private jetport at Chicago O'Hare, Monarch watched a Bloomberg News report featuring clips of a defiant Beau Arsenault doing the perp walk into federal court on charges of treason.

“I have been beaten and framed,” the mogul shouted into the cameras. “Not a word of what they're saying is true! A goddamned thief made this all up!”

Barnett sipped from a fruity cocktail, and then snapped at the screen, “Try ‘the goddamned thief pithed you like a froggie.'”

Santos, Tatupu, and Fowler raised their drinks to Monarch, who bowed and said, “I couldn't have done any of this without the brilliant and fearless efforts of each and every one of you, and Chavez, and Claudio, and everyone else who played a part. This was a team victory if there ever was one.”

Barnett gestured at the screen. “Five minutes until the closing bell.”

Monarch looked back to the screen where the anchors were agog and flustered at the depth of the unfolding scandal and the bearish effect it was having on the markets. The stock of ABI, Arsenault's public holding company, had tumbled nearly forty percent in the last three hours. The major indexes had plunged as well. Both the New York Stock Exchange and NASDAQ were off four percent and dropping.