It's All in the Game, page 8
part #6 of Crete Sloan Series
“How about you?” I said. “You got a name?”
He smiled softly and showed even, white teeth, which went nice with the white beard. The teeth were probably not his, rather those of a talented cosmetic dentist. Gray eyes were a nice contrast to the white teeth and white beard. I assumed the human trafficking business was lucrative enough to give him the look he wanted.
“No need for you to know,” he said. “You won’t be with us long, and I do not expect to be conversing with you beyond this brief meeting we have here.”
“Says you,” I said.
He turned to Expat.
“Tough guy,” said the Voice. “You hear that? He thinks he has some control over our meeting here, over our relationship. Foolish.” He turned to me. “We have an interest in your visit to Baku. We wish to tell you about it and make an offer, which you will accept. Or we can leave you on a blood-soiled bed in your hotel room. We prefer you should listen to our offer and then quietly, and of your own free will, disappear.”
I shrugged. What could I say? I said nothing.
“Now then,” he said. “You are here in Baku to locate a young woman. Her name is Maria Marcella. You have no clue where she is, but you continue to look and you continue to question our people.”
I raised my eyebrows as if to say maybe, maybe not.
“Esmira Zeynab,” he said. “Years ago we take her daughter. Now we give her daughter back to her. She remains friendly to us.”
“The police give her daughter back,” I said.
“Not without our blessing.”
Which told me Zeynab had alerted these guys. Which also told me that Gyl Bazar had done some quick research.
“What is your interest in this?” he said.
“Hired by her father to find her.”
“You are a detective?” he said.
“No,” I said.
“No?”
“No license,” I said. “I hire out for jobs like this.”
“You make good money doing this?”
“Enough,” I said.
“Do you have any ideas where she might be, this Maria Marcella?”
“None,” I said.
We were quiet for a minute. Expat eased up and softened his gaze on me. The gray eyes of the Voice softened slightly.
“What we have is this,” said the Voice. “Gyl Bazar does not have your Maria Marcella. We have not taken her, and, as far as I know, she is not on our radar.”
“You know this,” I said.
“I know this because we have a complex, sophisticated, and extensive record of our inventory. I am able to access information very quickly.”
“Inventory?” I said. “Human beings?”
The Voice leaned closer to the table. He looked at the expat, then at me.
“Here is our offer,” he said. “We do not have what you want. We never have. We have no interest in you unless you continue to meddle in our affairs. Therefore, as long as you stay away from us, we will leave you alone. If you continue to be a roach in our rice, you will not leave Baku.”
“Roach in your rice,” I said. “A cynical mobster.”
“Mobster?” he said. “Please, Mr. Sloan. Show respect.”
“Yeah, right,” I said. “Look, Mr. whatever-your-name-is, you don’t scare me. You don’t impress me. And I will continue to search for Maria Marcella wherever that search leads. And, what? I just trust your word that you have nothing to do with Maria Marcella?”
“Our word, my word is something you can trust,” he said. “On the other hand, what choice do you have?”
I looked first at the Voice, then at Expat. I shrugged. “I’ve got choices,” I said.
“Very well,” he said. “You will do what you need to do, and we will do likewise. We understand each other, and I wish our parting to be peaceful.”
He motioned to Expat. “Now,” said the Voice, “my friend here will free your hands and feet. He will place a blindfold on you and return you to White City. You will be unharmed as long as you do not meddle in our affairs.”
CHAPTER
21
While I was getting my butt kicked and racked by the human-trafficking boys, I had missed a call on my cell phone. Frank Marcella. He’d left a message. “We’ve heard from them. Come ASAP.”
At five o’clock that same afternoon, I arrived at the Boulevard Hotel. The sun was beyond high, but not yet dropping into the sea. A pleasant time of evening. Early happy hour. Frank Marcella’s apartment was in a different wing of the hotel from Maria’s and on a different floor, a considerable distance from Maria’s, and also Bender’s. I entered without a knock directly into the great room. Across from where I stood, the wall that faced the Caspian was all glass and allowed a view of the horizon seven miles out. I knew the distance to the horizon from experience. At beach level, for me, at my height and due to the curvature of the earth, the horizon is three miles out. Here on the third floor of the hotel, where you can see farther, it would be about seven miles out.
“You look like shit,” said Marcella. “Like someone mopped the pavement with you. What happened?”
“Someone mopped the pavement with me.”
“Connected to the search for Maria?” he said.
“Connected.”
As with his daughter’s apartment, Marcella’s was sparse of furniture but lavish in appointments. A poster-size photo of an ancient ship hung on the wall over a generous mahogany desk. The photo had been chucked into an ornately carved museum-quality frame coated with gold leaf; it probably cost more than all the contents in the rest of the room. The photo appeared to have been taken on what was a bleak, gray day. There was no demarcation between the gray sea and the gray sky, a mood as sullen as the composure of a young man strung out on heroin. A picture light was affixed to the top of the frame. The light was on.
Marcella noticed me looking at it. “The Zoroaster,” he said. “The first-ever tanker ship, and named for Zarathustra, a prophet of ancient Iran. Constructed of steel in 1877 by Ludwig Nobel. Capacity: two-hundred-forty tons. Our supertankers today carry nine-hundred times that. Nine hundred!”
Marcella sat in a leather-upholstered recliner chair that he had raked partially back. He wore a silk sport shirt and dress slacks. Expensive loafers up on the footrest of the chair. He looked tired, haggard, older. Creases lined his face. His eyes were dull and his mouth slack, downturned like a sad jack-o-lantern at Halloween. Like someone who hadn’t slept in days. Actually, Frank Marcella probably hadn’t slept in days. He didn’t rise when I entered.
I stood there in front of him. “So,” I said. “I’m here, A-S-A-P.”
He waved an envelope for me to see, still making no move in the chair.
Frank Marcella was a smooth businessman and, although I didn’t know it for a fact, I assumed he could charm the socks off a prospective customer or vendor. But this Maria thing was exacting a toll on his physical and emotional well-being, and he looked it. Pitiful, slumped back on the recliner in his exquisite bespoke clothes, with a face full of anguish. It brought to mind that fact of life that we all know but so often tend to forget: all the money in the world—a good portion of which Frank Marcella could lay claim to—can’t buy peace and contentment.
I took the envelope from him and sat in the leather non-recliner version of the same chair in which he lay. “From the captors?” I said.
“Read it,” he said.
The envelope was a number ten business type. There was no postmark.
“Hand delivered?” I said.
“It was under the door when I arrived back here slightly after noon.”
I removed the letter from the envelope. It was handwritten on cheap eight-and-a half-by-eleven copy paper.
“Read it,” said Frank.
It was brief:
Frank,
I am okay. I am not harmed. Please do what my captors ask of you. Soon they will make demands. They are not ready yet. They know you have hired a man to find me. They have no beef with this man. This man will not find me, but may become a problem for them. If he becomes a problem for them, they tell me they will do horrible things to him.
I love you, Maria
I looked up from the letter. Marcella was staring at me. “Is it her handwriting?” I said.
“Yes, most certainly.”
I figured I didn’t need to ask him if he was sure.
“Is this the way she speaks? They have no beef with this man?”
“No.”
“Does she call you ‘Frank’? Not ‘Father’ or ‘Dad’?”
“She calls me Pop.”
“Does she tell you she loves you, as she does here in the letter?”
“Not often,” he said.
I took that to mean probably not at all. While there may be an intimacy between them, it is not out in the open where hugs and kisses and verbal assurances are traded.
We were quiet for a moment.
“So,” I said, “someone dictated this letter while she wrote. Is that the way you figure it?”
Marcella nodded. “Don’t they usually cut letters from a newspaper or magazine to do this?” he said. “Or is that just in the movies?”
“When it’s the kidnapper who’s writing the letter,” I said. “Because even if it’s typed on a computer and printed, the print can be traced back to a specific printer. Therefore, they use newspaper clippings. But this”—I waved the letter—“was written not by the kidnapper, but by the victim. We know the victim. There is no reason to disguise her handwriting.”
I read the letter again.
Frank. Not Pop. Someone who would call Marcella by his name. Frank. Someone who knew Marcella. Probably not someone who would call him Mr. Marcella. Someone more intimate.
Beef. They have no beef with him. How about “they have no argument with him,” or, “they have no interest in him?” They have no beef with him. Who speaks colloquially like that?
Become a problem. Not give them trouble, or become a thorn in their side, but become a problem.
“At least we know she is alive,” I said. “The tone of the words doesn’t sound like she is in terror. Calm, but serious. And there’s a silver lining here. We now know she is not the victim of human trafficking.”
“She’s not?”
“Not what? The victim of human trafficking?” I said.
He stared at me through wet eyes.
“It’s not only the letter,” I said. “The human trafficking boys inserted themselves into my life early this morning. I didn’t want them in my life, but there they were. Not friendly. As a matter of fact, downright nasty, but, as I say, there they were. We had a little talk, the human trafficking boys and me. More precisely, they talked, I listened. Said they had nothing I wanted and I should stay out of their lives, and if I had other thoughts, I might end up being traffic. They play rough, but they know their business well. Seemed genuinely confused over a girl named Maria Marcella, did a quick check of their inventory and came up negative. I had the sense they were telling the truth and simply wanted me out of their world.”
“And you believed them,” said Marcella.
“Yeah, sure,” I said. “There is an injustice in what they do—those boys—it’s brutal and unforgiving and all that, and every society is against it, against what they do. But I believed the man when he said he had no interest in an American businesswoman. He said taking such a woman would focus attention on his operation, as if he didn’t already have enough attention. Their inventory, so to speak, is comprised of women who are down and out, desperate, and often decrepit. Not the likes of Maria. The man had no apologies for his business and no reason to bullshit me. He could have killed me right there but didn’t. Why he didn’t, I don’t know. But he didn’t, and that’s good enough for me. Long and short of it is, I don’t believe they have Maria.”
Marcella squirmed in his chair. He looked from me to the ceiling and back to me.
“But she is being held by someone,” he said. “And the kidnapper wants us to know—to know that she is being held.”
“Of course,” I said, “The letter here—I waved it again—is simply to say the kidnapping is for real and that there’ll be more to come.”
“More to come?” he said. “What more can there be to come?”
“You’re sure this is Maria’s handwriting?”
Marcella nodded.
“Your daughter is being held by kidnappers. We still need a ransom letter for money with an amount and, at some point, instructions for how to go about a transfer.”
“Or a letter for something other than money,” Marcella said.
“Good point,” I said and wondered if Marcella had something in mind he wasn’t telling me about.
CHAPTER
22
I was back in my room at the Sport Hotel, lying on the bed, hands behind my neck, staring at the ceiling.
I knew Maria Marcella had been kidnapped and that it had not been by the human trafficking boys. I knew because the human trafficking boys had gone to a great length to convince me it was not them. And because the kidnapped Maria had written a ransom letter to her father. Well, sort of a ransom letter. They didn’t ask for money.
I knew there were oil leases in the Caspian up for bid and that Marcella wanted them. I knew another guy named Donner also wanted them. I knew Donner wanted them because Bender had told me.
I knew Maria Marcella was doing gofer work for Marcella Petroleum there in Baku and that her father owned the company. Apparently everyone has high hopes for her, and, with her father’s owning the company, she would probably be able to jump over obstacles the less fortunate would need to deal with. I wondered if one or more of the less fortunate might be willing to eliminate the obstacle of Maria several rungs up the ladder ahead of them.
I got off the bed and went to the window. It was the end of July; the days were long. The sun was on its way down. Not far down, but far enough that the rays slanted and raked gold over the landscape of White City. Cast it in a picturesque glow. I could see Marcella’s office in the banana building across from me, the tenth floor where Marcella Petroleum hung out. Several floors down, it appeared there was a party in full swing out on the terrace. I counted. Fifth floor. People sat at tables and others stood chatting, drinks in hand. Solving the problems of the world.
I pulled out the photo of Maria and looked at it. Twenty-one days you’ve been missing.
I sat on the edge of the bed. Why so long? Too long for a kidnapping. We had the letter from Maria, but no ransom demands and no instructions. Which meant even more time would elapse before confrontation with the kidnappers.
If there were kidnappers. Could Marcella have kidnapped his own daughter? At our first meeting on the porch of my shack, I questioned him about her possibly being off on her own. She’s missing, he had said, as if the matter were irrevocably settled. Maybe he knew something he wasn’t putting on the table. When I asked him if there was any reason why Donner Oil would be more aggressive than the others in fighting him, he answered no. But it wasn’t a convincing answer. He wanted reports on my efforts, but nothing written. You talk to me, he had said. Was there another side to Marcella’s life, a dark side? He had money—tons of it—and he lived alone, the life of a widower. As a single parent, he had raised Maria. He admits he may have made mistakes but, overall, believes he has been a good father. And her success to the present seems to confirm that. The question is how would it benefit Marcella to kidnap his daughter? I just could not get my head around a dark side of him.
And could he have gotten her to write the ransom letter? Could they be in it together? None of your business. That’s what he said when I asked him if there were any family differences between him and Maria. None of your business. Said with a note of determination that suggested the matter was done and buried. Not to be visited again. I disregarded it there in his office, where he had said it. But now I was thinking I should come at that same subject from a different angle whenever the opportunity arose.
Marcella had something on his mind. Something he wasn’t telling me. Something related to his daughter’s missing.
CHAPTER
23
Bender and I rode the elevator to the tenth floor of the Gateway building to the Marcella Petroleum layout. July in Azerbaijan. Eighty degree high, no rain. Like a desert. The sea was blue, the sky was blue. Summer was in the air.
We were greeted by a man of striking features. Tall, almost as tall as I am. Lean, no body fat. Hair prematurely gray, parted in the middle and longish, but not over the ears. Thin face, long neck, and big crystal eyes behind rimless glasses.
“Crete Sloan,” he said. “I met you, both of you, at the Sky Grill, top of the Hilton.”
“I remember,” said Bender.
“I’m James Lang. Call me James, not Jimmy.” His grip was firm and his shake was shoulder-wrenching.
James Lang wore a precisely laundered white spread-collar shirt, charcoal-gray dress slacks running a deep blue pinstripe, and some sort of high-end, highly polished cap-toe oxfords.
“Call me Sloan,” I said. I turned toward Bender. “Lisa Bender. She works with me. Call her Lisa,” I added just to keep the call stuff going.
“Or he works with me,” said Bender. She offered her hand to James Lang. Then she smiled at me.
“Frank will be along shortly,” said Lang. “Let’s make ourselves comfortable.” He walked us back to his office, which was similar to Marcella’s, but without the corner view. Similar in that there were framed photos of the oil industry on the walls. Rigs, tankers, refining operations. The frames looked expensive. Other than that, the office was impressive for its starkness. No antique furniture, no plants, flowers, or potted palms. A rather plain desk of some sort of carbon fiber on steel legs, lathered with computer gear, big enough to seat six people in client chairs, presumably for conferencing. There was one stand of bookshelves. Academic texts and popular business works. A few notable management publications. Drucker’s The Practice of Management, Deming’s Out of the Crisis, Collins’s Built to Last. Marcella had said Lang was the chief operating officer.
