Beyond Suspicion, page 20
“Accused by whom?”
“Everyone.”
“Everyone? Or yourself?”
“What do you mean by that?”
“I’m just trying to think like Jessie. Maybe her objective wasn’t simply to get the money in the hands of the child she gave up for adoption. Maybe she was just as interested in making you feel guilty as hell about the whole situation.”
“Years of pent-up anger, is that it?”
“It’s a long time, but who knows what was going through her head?”
Jack took another long sip. “I think I know.”
“You want to share?”
Jack glanced at the mirror behind the bar, speaking to Mike without looking at him. “Jessie couldn’t have kids.”
“She apparently had one.”
“I mean after that one. I saw her whole medical file during our case. She had PID.”
“What?”
“Pelvic inflammatory disease. It’s an infection that goes up through the uterus to the fallopian tubes. It was cured, but the damage was done. Doctors told her she’d probably never have kids.”
“How did she get it?”
“How do you think?”
Mike nodded, as if suddenly it was all coming together. “You and her break up, she finds out she’s pregnant. She comes back to you before she’s really started to show and tells you she wants to get back together. But you’ve already met Cindy Paige, so she keeps the baby a secret. Last thing she wants is you coming back to her just because she’s pregnant.”
Jack filled in the rest, staring through the smoke-filled room. “She gives up the baby for adoption, meets some guy who gives her PID, and just like that, she finds herself in a situation where she’s given away the only child she’s ever going to bring into this world.”
They glanced at one another and then looked away, their eyes drifting aimlessly in the direction of whatever nonsense was playing on the muted television set.
“Hey, Jack,” said Mike.
“Yeah?”
“I think I figured out why Jessie came back to stick it to you as her attorney after all these years.”
Jack swirled the ice cubes in his glass and said, “Yeah. Me too.”
39
•
Katrina walked into the Brown Bear around six-thirty with Vladimir at her side. The restaurant was about half-full, and she spotted Theo instantly. They walked right past the sign that said please wait to be seated and joined Theo in a rear booth.
Katrina made the introductions, and they slid across the leather seats, Katrina and her boss on one side of the booth, across from Theo.
The Brown Bear was in East Hollywood, just off Hallandale Beach Boulevard. It had a huge local following, mostly people of Eastern European descent. The newspaper dispenser just outside the door wasn’t the Miami Herald or the South Florida Sun-Sentinel but eXile, a biweekly paper from Moscow. Behind the cash register hanged an autographed photo of Joseph Kobzon, favorite pop singer of former Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev and a household name to generations of Russian music lovers, known best for his soulful renditions of patriotic ballads. The buzz coming from the many crowded tables was more often Russian or Slovak than English or Spanish. Meals were inexpensive and served family-style, gluttonous portions of skewered lamb, chopped liver, and beef Stroganoff. Caviar and vodka cost extra. On weekends, a three-piece band and schmaltzy nightclub singer entertained guests. Reservations were essential-except for guys like Vladimir.
Katrina wondered if Theo had any idea that the Cyrillic letters tattooed onto each of her boss’ fingers identified him as a made man among vory, a faction of the Russian Mafiya so powerful it was almost mythical.
“Katrina tells me you used to work together,” said Vladimir.
She shot Theo a subtle glance. Vladimir had quizzed her on the car ride over, and she’d been forced to concoct a story. Revealing the true circumstances under which she and Theo had met would only have exposed herself as a snitch.
“That’s right,” said Theo, seeming to catch her drift.
Katrina took it from there. “I’ve come a long way from slogging drinks at Sparky’s, haven’t I, Theo?”
“You sure have.”
“I like that name,” said Vladimir. “Sparky’s.”
“I came up with it myself. The old electric chair in Florida used to be called ‘Old Sparky.’ When I beat the odds and got off death row, I thought Sparky’s was a good name for a bar.”
Vladimir smiled approvingly, as if serving time on death row only confirmed that Theo was all right. “Do you own this Sparky’s?”
“Half of it. I’m the operations partner. Buddy of mine put up all the money.”
“Other people’s money,” Vladimir said with a thin smile. “We should drink to that.” He signaled the waitress, and almost immediately she brought over three rounds of his usual cocktail, one for each of them.
“What’s this?” asked Theo.
“Tarzan’s Revenge.”
“Ice-cold vodka and Japanese sake poured over a raw quail’s egg,” said Katrina.
“I didn’t know Tarzan drank.”
She didn’t bother explaining that Tarzan was not Johnny Weissmuller but a flamboyant, muscle-bound Russian mobster famous for wild sex orgies on his yacht and a hare-brained scheme to sell a Russian nuclear submarine to the Colombian cartel for underwater drug smuggling.
“Cheers,” said Vladimir, and each of them belted one back.
Just as soon as the first round was gone the waitress brought another. Katrina joined in the second and third rounds but passed on the fourth and fifth. She’d seen Vladimir operate before, knew he could outdrink any American, and knew that Tarzan’s Revenge was Vladimir’s way of loosening tongues and tripping up rats.
“Tell us more about your proposal,” said Vladimir.
“Let me start by being upfront with you. I’m not gonna try to hide the fact that I’m a friend of Jack Swyteck.”
“You mean the lawyer?”
“You know who I mean.”
Vladimir was stone-faced. “You said you had business.”
“That’s right. And for me, business is business. Swyteck’s not part of it. So, it’s your choice. You can tell me to shut up and go away, that you don’t want shit to do with any friend of Jack Swyteck. Or you can put my friendships aside and act like a businessman, which means both of us make a lot of money.”
Vladimir removed a cigar from his inside pocket, unwrapped the cellophane. “Everyone I do business with has friends I can’t stand.”
“That’s what I thought you’d say. You look like a very smart man.”
“What are you offering?”
“Viatical settlements.”
“How much?”
“The sky’s the limit.”
Vladimir laughed like a nonbeliever. “I’ve heard that one before.”
“Maybe so. But not from someone who understands your business the way I do.”
“You know so much, do you?”
“You got a lot of cash on your hands.”
“What makes you think that?”
“It’s written all over your face. And your hands,” he said as he glanced at the Cyrillic letters on Vladimir’s fingers.
Katrina said nothing, but she was starting to reconsider. Maybe this Theo isn’t as dumb as he looks.
Vladimir said, “A guy could have worse problems.”
“But too much cash is still a problem. So I figure it works this way. You got a pot of dirty money.”
“I have no dirty money.”
“Just for the sake of argument, let’s say you got fifty million dirty dollars. Some from drugs, some from prostitution, extortion, illegal gaming, whatever. We can all talk freely here. We’re among friends, right, Katrina?”
“Old friends are the best friends,” she said.
“Okay,” said Vladimir. “Let’s say fifty million.”
“Let’s say I got a hundred guys dying from AIDS who are willing to sell their life insurance policies to you for five hundred thousand dollars a pop. You do a hundred separate deals, all impossible to trace, and pay out fifty million in cash. My guys name some offshore companies formed by your lawyer as the beneficiary under their life insurance policy. When they die, the life insurance company pays you the death benefit. Clean money.”
“How much?”
“Double. You start with fifty million in dirty money. In two years you got a hundred million in clean money straight from the coffers of triple-A-rated insurance companies.”
Vladimir glanced at Katrina. Again she said nothing, though it impressed her the way Theo had put so much together. She suspected that Jack had done at least some of the unraveling.
“Sounds intriguing,” said Vladimir. “I might be interested under the right circumstances.”
“If you had fifty million dirty dollars?”
“No. If you actually had a hundred fags with life insurance in the pipeline.”
“A buddy of mine owns nine AIDS hospices. Three in California, four in New York, two in south Florida. All high-end, all wealthy clientele. No one who checks into these places is long for this earth.”
“That could be a very useful connection.”
“I thought so.”
Vladimir’s cell phone rang. He checked the number and grimaced. “I gotta take this. Back in a minute.”
Katrina waited until he was safely outside the restaurant, then glared at Theo and said, “What in the hell do you think you’re doing?”
“Going to the source.”
“What for?”
“It’s like Jack and me figured. We find out who’s laundering all that viatical money, we find Jessie Merrill’s killer.”
“Do you have any idea who you’re dealing with?”
“Yes. Do you?”
“Eventually Vladimir is going to see right through you. You can’t bluff these people.”
“Why not? You did.”
“That’s different. I’m working from the inside.”
“Give me a little time. I’ll be right there beside you.”
“Have you lost your mind? You’re going to get yourself killed.”
“Only if you blow my cover. But you won’t do that. Because if you do, I’m taking you down with me.”
She was so angry she could have leaped across the table and strangled him. But Vladimir was back, and she quickly forced herself to regain her composure.
He sank back into the booth and snapped his fingers. The waitress brought another round of Tarzan’s Revenge.
“To your health,” said Vladimir.
He belted back the drink. Katrina did likewise, keeping one angry eye on Theo.
Vladimir put the unlit cigar back in his pocket, as if signaling that it was time to leave. He looked at Theo and said, “I’m afraid I have to go, but before I do, I want to leave you with this story. You ever heard of the money plane?”
“Money plane? I don’t think so.”
“Delta Flight 30. It used to leave JFK for Moscow at 5:45 P.M. five days a week. Rarely did it leave with less than a hundred million dollars in its cargo belly. Stacks of new hundred dollar bills, all shipped in white canvas bags. Over the years, about 80 billion dollars came into Russia that way. Just one unarmed courier on the flight, no special security measures. And not once did anyone even try to hijack the plane. Why do you think that is?”
“The food sucked?”
“Because anyone who knew about the money also knew that it was being bought by Russian banks. And if you rip off a Russian bank, nine chances out of ten says you’re ripping off the Russian Mafiya. Nobody has big enough balls or a small enough brain to do that. So that plane just kept right on flying.”
“Very interesting.”
“You understand what I’m saying?”
“I’m pretty sure I do.”
“Give us two days. If you check out, you meet Yuri.”
“Sounds good.”
Katrina said, “Tell him what happens if he doesn’t check out.”
“I think he gets the point,” said Vladimir.
“I like to be explicit with my friends. He should hear.”
Vladimir leaned forward, a wicked sparkle in his eye. “You don’t check out, you meet Fate. And he has not a pretty face.”
Theo gave an awkward smile. “Funny how you talk about fate as if it’s a person.”
“That is funny,” said Vladimir. “Because we all know that Fate is an animal.” He laughed loudly, pounding the table with his fist. Then all traces of a smile ran from his face. “Good-bye, Theo.”
Theo rose and said, “You know where to reach me, right, Katrina?”
“Don’t worry. We won’t have trouble finding you.”
She watched as he turned and walked away, then headed out the door, not sure if she should be angry or feel sorry for him.
Theo, my boy, you were safer on death row.
40
•
Dr. Marsh sat in silence in the plush leather passenger seat of his lawyer’s Lexus. They were just a half-block away from Mercy Hospital, an acute-care facility that sat on premier Miami waterfront, the Coconut Grove side of Biscayne Bay. Year after year it was voted “best view from a deathbed” by a local offbeat magazine. Dr. Marsh had missed his morning rounds at the hospital, and they were popping by the parking lot just to pick up his car. But Jessie Merrill was still weighing on his mind.
“Funny thing about that videotape,” said Marsh.
Zamora stopped the car at the traffic light. “How so?”
“I don’t know if Jessie was sleeping with Swyteck or not. But she definitely wasn’t obsessed with him.”
Zamora rolled his cigar between his thumb and index finger. “You’d never guess that from the tape. She screamed his name while having sex with you.”
“These tapes she did were purely shock value. There’s nothing honest about them.”
“I’m not following you.”
Marsh looked out the window, then back. “This was exactly the kind of thing that bitch liked to do. She’d get me all hot and then say something to spoil the mood and set me off.”
“How do you mean?”
“The tapes weren’t the least bit erotic for her. It was all about her warped sense of humor. One time, before I’d decided to get a divorce, she had me on the verge of orgasm and then pretended my wife had just walked into the room. That was her favorite tape of all, watching me fly out of the bed butt-naked. Other times she’d just scream out another man’s name. She used my seventeen-year-old son’s name once, my partner’s another time. But her favorite one was Jack. She knew that one really got me.”
“Why did that name bother you so much?”
“I don’t know.”
“Is it possible that you were a little jealous of Jack Swyteck?”
“No.”
“Maybe you had reason to be jealous. Maybe when she screamed his name, it wasn’t just for effect.”
“It was totally for effect. She just wanted to make me crazy.”
“Crazy enough to kill her?”
Their eyes locked. “I told you before, I didn’t kill her.”
“Then the polygraph should be a breeze.”
“I think I’ve changed my mind on that. I don’t want to take a polygraph.”
“Why not?”
“I swear, I had nothing to do with Jessie’s death. I just don’t believe in polygraphs. I think liars can beat them, and I think innocent people who get nervous can fail.”
Zamora twirled his cigar, thinking. “I have a good examiner. Maybe I can get Jancowitz to agree to use him.”
“I really don’t want to take one. I don’t care who’s administering it. Hell, it tests your breathing, your heart rate, your blood pressure. I get so furious whenever anyone asks me about Jessie Merrill, I’m afraid I’ll fail even if I tell the truth.”
“Then you shouldn’t have acted so eager to do it back in Jancowitz’s office.”
“I was bluffing. I figured the more willing I seemed to take one, the less likely he was to push for it.”
“Prosecutors can never get enough. It’s going to be hard to get him to back down.”
“Maybe if the testimony we offer is so good, he’ll do the deal even if we refuse to sit for a polygraph.”
Zamora gave his client a look. “How good?”
“We already have a good base. That joint bank account is pretty damning for Swyteck.”
“Why did she put him on that account?”
“Damned if I know.”
“Why weren’t you on it?”
“The money was never intended for me. This was something I was doing for her.”
“Got to keep the high-maintenance other woman happy, eh?”
“Do you have any idea how hard it is to provide for another woman when your wife of twenty-four years is suing for every penny in divorce?”
“I understand.”
“But let’s not lose focus here. We got Jessie Merrill naming Swyteck as her coaccount holder on the one-point-five million dollars, and we got her on tape screaming out his name. That’s a damn good start. The prosecutor says he wants more, so I’ll give him more.”
“He doesn’t just want more.”
“I hear you.”
“I’m serious,” said Zamora. “There is no upside in lying to a grand jury. We need to comb over every word you say. It all has to be true.”
“Sure, I love a true story.”
“Just so the emphasis is more on ‘true,’ less on ‘story.’”
The doctor flashed a wry smile. “That’s what the truth’s all about, isn’t it?”
“What?”
The traffic light turned green. Zamora steered his car toward the hospital entrance. Dr. Marsh looked out the window at the passing palm trees and said, “It’s all just a matter of emphasis.”
41
•
It was almost midnight as they lay together in Cindy’s old bedroom, their last night at Cindy’s mother’s. A small twenty-five-year-old lamp on the nightstand cast a faint glow across the bedsheets. It was a girl’s lamp with a pink-and-white shade. Jack wondered what had gone through Cindy’s head as a child, as she’d lain in this very room night after night. He wondered what dreams she’d had. Nothing like the nightmares she had as a grown-up, surely. It pained him to think that perhaps Evelyn was right, that he only added to Cindy’s anxieties.
