Dog Tags

CHAPTER 70

AS SOON AS COURT ENDS, I CALL JONATHAN CHAPLIN. I have to hold for almost five minutes, but he finally gets on the line. I tell him I need to see him, and ask him if I can come right over.

“What is this about?” he asks.

“Something has come up about the case I’m working on, but I also need some investment advice, on an urgent basis.”

“Nephew Philip isn’t providing satisfactory service?” he asks.

“It’s Edna’s nephew Freddie. Let’s just say he has his limitations.”

He tries to arrange a meeting for next week, but I press him, telling him that the court schedule is such that I really have no time. Finally, he agrees to see me at six o’clock this evening, but warns that he will only have forty-five minutes before leaving for a dinner engagement.

“Perfect,” I say.

Sam Willis is working on trying to find out if Chaplin’s hedge fund, C&F Investments, was particularly active in the oil market at the time of the Iraq explosion, and the rhodium market when the mine blew up. I want to know if they made unusually large profits as a result of those events. But even Sam admits that it will be difficult. He must first penetrate the company’s cyber security and then—if he’s successful at that—read and understand the enormous number of transactions a company that size will conduct.

We could also try to subpoena the information, but we would need to offer the court proof that it is relevant to the case, and at this point we don’t have enough to do that. Hunches are not usually a key component of offers of proof, and a wife’s relating that she thinks her husband was upset by a news story won’t carry much weight, either.

One of the problems is that C&F is a private company, and therefore has considerably fewer reporting requirements. The trades it makes on behalf of its clients are proprietary information, and correctly should not be allowed to be viewed by those that could be competitors.

One way or another we’ll get the information, but if Sam can’t do it, and the company contests it, we might not have it before Billy is up for parole. It’s definitely a time to be aggressive.

Chaplin is actually wearing a tuxedo when I arrive, no doubt for the dinner engagement he spoke about. The only way I’d be wearing a tuxedo to dinner is if I were having it at Buckingham Palace, and I were going to be knighted as Sir Andy of Paterson.

“I feel underdressed,” I say.

He smiles. “I envy you. These charity dinners… sometimes I wish I could just stay home and write a check. So what can I do for you?”

“Well, if you don’t mind, can I just borrow your phone for a minute? I left my cell in the car, and I just have to tell my co-counsel something.”

He nods and points to the phone on his desk. “Use my private line.”

“Thanks.” I pick up the phone and dial Sam Willis’s number, and he of course answers on the first ring. “Got the number,” he says.

“Hike, it’s Andy. I need the forensics documents for tonight, but I left them in the office. Can you get me copies?”

Sam laughs. “Sure. No problem.”

I hang up and turn to Chaplin. “Thanks. So I have money to invest, and I’m thinking of putting it into rhodium.”

He actually flinches at the word, though he regains his composure quickly. “Rhodium,” he repeats.

“Rhodium,” I say, probably breaking the record for the most times “rhodium” has been said consecutively.

“I don’t really know much about it,” he says.

“Really? My information is that your company was heavily invested in it when that mine blew up in South Africa. Congratulations on that, by the way. I hear you cleaned up. That’s exactly the kind of thing Freddie misses out on.”

“Can’t help you,” Chaplin says. “So if you’ll excuse me…”

“Between that and the money you made on oil when your partner and Alex Bryant got killed, you’ve had quite a year.”

“What are you trying to say, Carpenter?” His voice is cold, and his whole attitude has convinced me that I am right in my suspicions. There’s plenty I don’t know yet, but what I believe is that this guy is dirty. And that he was involved in the deaths of a lot of people, including his partner and Alex Bryant. He’s a piece of garbage, dressed in a tuxedo.

“I’m trying to say that pretty soon you won’t have to go to any more charity dinners looking like an asshole.”

As exit lines go, I’ve had worse, and I turn and walk out the door.

I get in my car and drive around the block. I park in a spot from which I can see the parking lot of Chaplin’s building. I don’t know what kind of car he drives, and over the next twenty minutes three cars exit the lot. It’s too dark to see if he’s driving, but I don’t follow them because they’re relatively inexpensive, domestic cars.

Not Chaplin’s type.

Finally a Jaguar comes out of the lot, and I follow it at a distance. This is not my strong point, and a couple of times I almost lose him. But I manage to stay with him, and he leads me to the Woodcliff Hilton Hotel.

I follow him into the parking lot, and watch as he leaves the car with the valet. The valet is busy, and almost all his other customers are dressed in formal attire as well, so my assumption is that Chaplin was not so distressed by my visit that it caused him to miss the charity dinner.

I head home, calling Sam on the way. “He didn’t make a call,” Sam says. “At least not from that phone.”

My hope had been that Chaplin would have called a co-conspirator from the phone I had used, which Sam could then have traced. That has worked for us before, but Chaplin was either too smart or too lucky.

“Okay… it was worth a try.”

“I tried to get his cell phone number,” he says. “But there’s none in his name; they’re all registered to the company. More than eighty of them.”

My next call is to Willie. “You ready to play private eye?”

“You’d better believe it,” he says. “What have you got?”

I ask him if he can come right over, and he’s eager to do so. Rather than talk to him on the phone, I’d like Laurie to be around, so I can update her on my meeting with Chaplin and in the process get her input.

Willie is at the house before I am; he and Laurie are in the kitchen with the dogs, and he is eating what I am sure was meant to be my dinner. Between him and Marcus, if this case doesn’t end soon, I’m going to starve to death.

I bring them up to date on everything that has transpired, right through Sam’s lack of success in getting Chaplin’s cell phone number. When I’m finished, Laurie asks, “Who were you hoping he would call?”

“Somebody else involved in the operation. A co-conspirator.”

“Maybe he doesn’t have one; maybe Erskine was the only guy. With M doing the dirty work.”

I shake my head. “I don’t think so. This feels bigger than that. If I had to guess, I think Chaplin’s company was used as the conduit for investments in oil and rhodium. Maybe Freeman and Bryant were complicit in it, but I don’t think so.”

“Why?”

“Because Kathy Bryant said that Alex was upset when he saw the report about the rhodium blast.”

“So maybe he and Freeman were considered a risk to blow the whistle, and that’s why they were killed in the explosion.”

I nod. “Which would have made it three for the price of one. The blast sent the price of oil way up, and killed the two guys who were a danger to the scheme.”

Willie has been sitting patiently through this, and when there is a lull he asks, “So what do you want me to do?”

“Follow Chaplin wherever he goes. Take pictures of anybody you see him meeting with. But don’t let him see you.”

Willie nods. “Cool.”

Laurie seems a little worried about this, as I knew she would be. “You comfortable with this, Willie?”

“Sure. No sweat.”

I give him the address of Chaplin’s home and office, which Sam had gotten for me. We go online and find a bunch of pictures of Chaplin, so Willie will recognize him. Finally, I give him my digital camera; it’s not CIA-issue, but it should work. He promises to get started first thing in the morning, and then leaves.

“This may not be the best use of Willie’s talents,” Laurie says, probably understating how she really feels.

“I know,” I say, “but I think he can handle it. And there’s not much downside if he can’t.”

“How is that?”

“Well, I don’t see Chaplin as savvy in these matters, so he probably isn’t good at spotting a tail. But if he does, then he’ll feel pressured and worried, and that’s a good thing. Maybe it will force him into a mistake.”

She seems unconvinced. “You may be right, but I’m worried about Willie.”

“He can handle himself even better than I can,” I say.

“Is that supposed to make me feel better?”

I guess not.