Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 134, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 817 & 818, September/October 2009

The Way They Limp by Clark Howard

Five-time Readers Award winner Clark Howard is one of the all-time masters of the mystery/crime short story. This autumn, at the Bouchercon Convention in Indianapolis, the Short Mystery Fiction Society will be recognizing his incomparable accomplishments in the field when they make him the first winner of a new award named in honor of EQMm’s long-time, beloved contributor Edward D. Hoch. The Edward D. Hoch Memorial Golden Derringer Award for Lifetime Achievement will join many other certificates and plaques Mr. Howard has earned — including, of course, the statuette of Edgar Allan Poe that he won in 1981 for best short story.

Angus Doyle was having a late breakfast on the east patio of his gated, guarded estate when his attorney, Solomon Silverstein, arrived.

“You eat yet?” Doyle asked by way of greeting.

“No. And I probably won’t all day,” the lawyer snapped. “I’ve lost my appetite. And my ulcer is going crazy. It’ll probably perforate.”

“Oh? What’s bothering your ulcer, Sol?”

Silverstein sat and drew over an extra chair on which to place and open his briefcase. From it he extracted four documents folded in blue legal covering. “These are what’s bothering me,” he said, placing them directly in front of Angus Doyle’s breakfast plate.

“What are they?” Doyle asked, not touching them.

“Subpoenas, Gus. Federal grand-jury subpoenas. For Quinn, Foley, Dwyer, and Connor.”

“But not for me?”

“Not yet.”

Doyle grunted quietly. “What’s the grand jury looking at? RICO again?”

RICO. Racketeering Influenced Corrupt Organizations. An all-purpose federal crime designed to bring down organized-crime operations.

“No, not RICO. Not this time, Gus.” The lawyer’s expression turned grim. “This time it’s income-tax evasion.”

“What!” Doyle was taken aback. “I pay my taxes!” he declared indignantly.

“Of course you do,” Sol said. “On your legitimate businesses. On your up-front operations: the bowling alleys and bars, the laundry and dry-cleaning services, the limo and escort services, the convenience-store franchises, all the rest. But you don’t pay income tax on the other stuff: the gambling, hijacking, prostitution—”

“How the hell can I?” Doyle demanded. “Those things are illegal!”

“Exactly. And that’s what they’re now trying to get you for. Income is income, whether it’s legal or illegal. Remember a fellow named Al Capone?” The attorney leaned forward urgently. “Can’t you see what they’re doing? Quinn, Foley, Dwyer, and Connor. Your four top men. Between them, they know everything about your operation. Everything you run, all the front businesses, the payoffs, where the money comes from, where the bodies are buried—”

“Sol, please. I’m eating,” Doyle said.

“Do you see my point?”

“No.”

“Look, they’re going to bring in each of your men separately to be questioned by Department of Justice attorneys in front of a secret grand jury. No defense lawyers are allowed, there’s no transcript, no rules of evidence apply because the purpose is not to convict anyone, merely to indict.” Silverstein took a deep breath. “Do you suppose I can get a glass of cold milk?”

Doyle rang a small silver bell on the table. In seconds a white-coated attendant appeared and the milk was ordered. “Sure you wouldn’t like something to eat, Sol? Eggs, bacon, O’Brien potatoes?”

“Good God, no! Do you want to kill me?”

There was a twinkle of mischief in Angus Doyle’s eyes, with just a hint of malice attached to it. Doyle was a stout, almost brutish, ruddy-faced man who could eat anything, and who could, and had, killed enemies with his bare hands. He was Black Irish to the core, and while he valued Solomon Silverstein to a large degree, he had never really been fond of him. In his entire life, Angus Doyle had never really been fond of anyone who was not Irish.

Sol fidgeted with a corner of the starched white cloth of Angus Doyle’s breakfast table. A thin, hyper, dedicated worrier of a man, he was nevertheless a brilliant litigator and appellate attorney who had kept Angus Doyle out of legal harm’s way for two decades, and someone whom Doyle had made very wealthy in return. When his glass of cold milk arrived, the lawyer gulped it down in several swallows, then rubbed his stomach as if to spread around its soothing effect.

“Tell me in plain language what’s bothering you, Sol,” Doyle said, continuing to devour the O’Brien potatoes laced with onions and green peppers.

“Quinn, Foley, Dwyer, and Connor. They will be questioned individually, in secret, and no one except the Justice Department attorney and the anonymous grand-jury members will ever know what they say. But — everything they say can be used to find evidence against anyone they give testimony about.”

Doyle belched. “So?”

“So, Gus, suppose one of them cuts a deal with the government?”

“One of my men? Sol, please.”

“It could happen, Gus. One of them gives enough information for the government to find cause to indict you, and you’d never know which one did it. Even they wouldn’t know which one did it. You go down. Your entire organization is wiped out. And the government gives immunity to Quinn, Foley, Dwyer, and Connor — so nobody ever knows who the informer was.”

“None of my men would ever do that,” Doyle said confidently.

“What makes you so sure? How do you know how much the government has compiled on each of them over the years? How do you know how much pressure can be put on one of them? Immunity, Gus, can be an orchid in a field of weeds.”

Doyle stopped eating. His expression grew thoughtful. “All right,” he said quietly, “for the sake of argument, suppose one of them does cut a deal. What happens next?”

“The government indicts you on numerous counts of income-tax evasion. They prove that you could not possibly have maintained the lifestyle you’ve established on the legitimate income you claimed on your tax returns.”

“How the hell can they prove something like that?”

“Paper trail, Gus. The cars you’ve bought over the years. The Canali suits and shirts you’ve had made. The Salvatore Ferragamo python shoes you wear. That Girard-Perregaux wrist watch you’re wearing that cost five hundred thousand dollars. The yacht you’ve got docked in Florida. The homes you own in Vail, Barbados, Costa Rica. Vera’s jewelry. Doreen’s private school in Switzerland—”

“Okay, okay.” Doyle raised a hand to stop the lawyer’s soliloquy, “I get the picture.” He pushed his plate away in disgust. “A man can’t even buy gifts for his wife and see that his daughter gets a proper education without the goddamned government sticking its nose into it,” he muttered irritably. After a few moments, he sighed wearily and said, “Assuming you’re right, what exactly happens then?”

“A caravan of federal agents will show up at daybreak some morning, put you under arrest, declare this place a crime scene, evict Vera, Doreen, and all the servants—”

“How can they do that? This is my home, for God’s sake! What right do they have to declare it a crime scene!”

“Your vault, Gus,” the lawyer said quietly. “Whoever blows the whistle on you will tell them about your vault.”

Doyle’s eyes widened to the point of bulging. Beneath his mansion was a lower level which housed an extensive wine cellar, a mammoth gun collection, and a floor-to-ceiling bank-style vault that was one of his most prized possessions.

“My vault,” he said to Sol Silverstein in a flat, dangerous tone, “is private property. It’s where I keep my rare stamp collection, my movie memorabilia collection, my ancient-coin collection, my gem collection, my early American postcard collection, and my baseball-card collection.” Now his voice faltered a bit. “Those things are personal, Sol. They mean a great deal to me. The government has no right to meddle with my hobbies!”

“That vault,” Sol quietly reminded him, “is also where you hoard money, Gus. I’ve seen sheaves of currency stacked to the ceiling in a back corner. The government will seize that money and everything else of value in that vault. I advised you not to have it installed, remember? Just as I advised you to have Quinn, Foley, Dwyer, and Connor retain private individual attorneys of their own, instead of having me representing them and you.”

“I like to have everything under one roof, Sol,” Doyle fretted. “Easier to keep track of things.”

“Yes, well, in this case it just made it easier to subpoena everyone with one stop.”

Doyle rose and walked to one end of the patio, from which he could see across meticulously manicured, flower-lined grounds to an eight-car garage behind and detached from the main house. In front of an open port was parked one of his wife Vera’s cars, a silver Bentley Arnage sedan. It was being wiped down with a chamois cloth by Harry Sullivan, a quiet but deceptively tough young man who was employed as a driver and bodyguard for Doyle’s second wife, Vera Kenny Doyle. Sullivan, known more commonly as Sully, also drove and bodyguarded Doreen, Doyle’s twenty-one-year-old daughter by his first wife, Edna Callahan Doyle, whom Doyle had lost to lymphoma when Doreen was only ten. Three years later, with Doreen approaching adolescence, Doyle had seen the need of a stepmother for her; there were, after all, many things of a sensitive, female nature with which even the most devoted single father was ill prepared to deal.

For his second wife, Angus Doyle had chosen and courted twenty-eight-year-old Vera Kenny, who managed Doyle’s escort service, and who was the daughter of a late friend of the younger Angus Doyle, at that time just making his mark in the Irish mob known as The Clan. Doyle, forty when he took his second wife, was twelve years older than Vera Kenny, but the two made a good fit and young Doreen took to her stepmother at once, thus removing a good deal of worry from Doyle’s mind. In all, Gus Doyle would have been a man of continuing contentment had it not been for the goddamned Department of Justice.

“All right, Sol,” Doyle said, turning his attention away from the eight-car garage, “what do we do now?”

“We have to get you as clean as possible before Quinn, Foley, Dwyer, and Connor are questioned at the grand jury. That means divesting yourself of as much liquid assets as possible. The other assets — real property, cars, the boat — we can put under protective mortgages so that the government can’t say that you bought them outright, therefore they can’t be used as evidence against you in a tax-evasion case. You see, it’s cash — that’s what they need. Cash in bank accounts, safe-deposit boxes, certificates of deposit, cash in that vault of yours — how much do you have stacked up down there anyway?”

“I don’t know.” Doyle shrugged self-consciously. “Maybe seven or eight.”

“Seven or eight hundred thousand?”

“Million.”

“Seven or eight million? For God’s sake, Gus.”

“It’s money I put away for a rainy day.” Doyle pointed an accusing finger at the lawyer. “You don’t know what it’s like to grow up dirt poor, Sol. If you did, you’d understand.”

Silverstein stared at his client in astonishment. From an inside coat pocket, he removed a handkerchief and blotted his forehead. He did not want to hear Angus Doyle’s poverty-in-the-Chicago-slums story again. “Gus,” he said firmly, “I want to know — exactly — how much money you have — anywhere, Gus — that can be traced to you. How much?”

Doyle sat back down and drummed his thick fingertips silently on the tablecloth. After a long moment of staring at his attorney with pursed lips, he said, “Twenty-five million.”

“How long will it take to pull it all together — close all the accounts, empty all the safe-deposit boxes, cash in all the certificates of deposit?”

Another shrug from Doyle. “Three, four days, I guess. But what the hell am I supposed to do with that much cash?”

“Convert it to bearer bonds, Gus. Convert all of it, along with your ‘rainy day’ cash in that vault of yours.”

“What the hell are bearer bonds?”

“They are unregistered, negotiable bonds payable to the holder regardless of who they were issued to. They’re as good as cash at any bank in the world.”

“So what do we do with these bearer bonds, then?”

“Get them out of the country. Move them to a Swiss bank in the Cayman Islands, where U.S. officials won’t have access to them.”

“How do we do that?”

“Someone you trust has to take them there. Who do you trust?”

“You.”

“Me! I’m your attorney, Gus. I can’t do anything like that. It wouldn’t be ethical. I could be disbarred.” Sol blotted his forehead again. “Who else do you trust?”

“Quinn, Foley, Dwyer, and Connor.”

“For God’s sake, Gus! They’re the ones I’m trying to protect you against! You can’t ask any of them to help you, because you don’t know which one to ask. They’re all suspect at the moment. What about Vera? Or Doreen?”

“Not Doreen.” Doyle shook his head vehemently. “I don’t want any of my business touching Doreen. I want her kept out of this completely. Do you understand that, Sol?”

“Yes, of course,” the attorney said quickly. He recognized Angus Doyle’s cold, hard, warning tone, his deadly tone. “I understand. Doreen will be kept out of it entirely, I assure you. That leaves Vera.”

“Yes,” Doyle said, rubbing his chin thoughtfully. “That leaves Vera.”

After Solomon Silverstein departed, Doyle went inside to his richly appointed, soundproof, and surveillance-protected office and pushed the intercom button for his garage. After three rings it was answered by Harry Sullivan.

“Sully, will you come up to my office, please.”

“Yessir, Mr. Doyle, be right there,” Harry Sullivan said.

By the time Doyle had opened a cold bottle of root beer from an executive refrigerator and was back at his desk drinking it, Harry Sullivan was there.

“Sit down, Sully.”

“Thank you, sir.”

Doyle smiled a slight, pleased smile. “How long have you worked for me now, Sully?”

“Two years and eight months, sir.”

“Do you know what the first thing was that I liked about you, Sully?”

“No, sir.”

“You always addressed me as ‘sir.’ Nobody ever did that before — except, of course, waiters and clerks, servants, people like that. But nobody close.” He tilted his head slightly. “Why did you do it, Sully? From the very beginning, I mean.”

“I don’t know, sir,” the younger man replied. “It just seemed like the natural thing to do. The respectful thing, I guess I mean to say.”

Doyle fell silent for a long moment, studying Harry Sullivan. The driver-bodyguard was more common looking than handsome, with light brown hair and brooding deep blue eyes. He had, Doyle thought, a dependable look about him, a steadiness. He could, Doyle already knew, be dangerous when necessary, as he had proved two years earlier when a drunken college boy at a house party had gone a little too far in his advances toward Doreen, had in fact torn open her blouse in the shadows of a porch, causing Doreen to yell for Sully, who was parked nearby waiting for her. Sully had broken the young man’s right eye socket with brass knuckles and ruptured his testicles. Doyle, of course, paid all the medical bills, and reasoned with the parents to convince them not to file criminal charges against Sully, whom he promised to seriously punish himself. Sully’s punishment came in the form of a one-thousand-dollar bonus.

“Do you like your job here, Sully?” Doyle asked.

“Yessir. Very much.”

“Tell me what you like about it.”

“Well, sir, you pay me very good wages. I have nice living quarters over the garage. The work is easy. Mrs. Vera and Miss Doreen treat me very well; they give me Christmas presents—”

“I give you Christmas presents too, Sully. Two thousand dollars it was last year, I think.”

“Yessir, I know that, and it was very generous of you. But what I meant was, Mrs. Vera and Miss Doreen give me personal Christmas presents.”

Doyle frowned slightly. This was something he didn’t know. “Personal presents like what, Sully?”

“Well, sir, last Christmas Mrs. Vera gave me a really nice sweater, cashmere. And Miss Doreen gave me a wallet with my initials on it. Here, I’ll show you—”

Sully drew a wallet from his hip pocket and stood to hold it over the desk for Doyle to see.

“Very nice,” Doyle complimented.

“That’s what I meant by personal, sir. They just treat me real nice, both of them.”

“Good. That’s good.” Leaning forward, Doyle clasped his hands on the desk. “Sully, I want to ask you a few questions and I don’t want you to be embarrassed by them, or afraid to give me honest answers. You drive for my wife and daughter, but you work for me. You do understand that, don’t you?”

“Definitely, yessir.”

“Good. Very good.” Doyle’s icy gray eyes fixed steadily on Sully. “Do you think my daughter is attractive, Sully?”

“Yessir, very much. She’s one of the prettiest girls I’ve ever seen.”

“You’d never get too, ah — friendly with my daughter, would you, Sully?”

“Never, Mr. Doyle! I know my place, sir. Miss Doreen is way out of my league. If I have any personal feelings about her at all, it’s like she was a little sister to me.”

“Little sister?” Doyle sat back and began drumming his fingers on the desktop while deciding whether he liked that analogy or not. He finally decided that it was all right. “I like that, Sully,” he said, giving the younger man a genuine smile. “You’re doing fine, boyo, fine. Now let me ask you a few things about Mrs. Vera. And remember,” he pointed a finger, “be honest with me.”

“I will be, sir.”

“Tell me about the places she has you drive her to.”

“Ah, let’s see, sir. There’s the hair salon, the manicure shop, her doctor now and again, the dentist, that big bookstore on Michigan Avenue, a lot of those — what are they called — bow something—?”

“Boutique shops?”

“Yessir, that’s it.”

“Does she ever have you take her anyplace you think is unusual?”

“No, sir. Mostly the same places all the time.”

“And what do you and my wife talk about when you’re driving her?”

“Not much at all, sir. Mrs. Vera is usually on her cell phone.”

“Who’s she mostly talking to?”

Sully looked down. “I couldn’t say, sir. I try not to listen.”

“Well, if you had to venture a guess, would you say she was talking to men or women?”

“Women, definitely, sir. I can’t help picking up snatches of her end of the conversation, and it sounds like they’re talking about clothes and shoe sizes and styles and spa treatments, things like that.”

“I see. Does she ever meet anyone for lunch?”

“Yessir. Two or three times a week.”

“Any men?”

“No, sir. Always ladies.”

“Always? Without exception?”

“Without exception, sir. I’ve never seen Mrs. Vera even speak to a man anywhere I’ve ever taken her—”

Just then there was a brief knock on the office door and Doyle’s daughter Doreen stuck her head in. “Daddy, do you know where Sully is? I want to go — oh, he’s in here with you. Sorry, Daddy.” She started to back out, but Doyle stopped her.

“No, no, it’s all right, dear, come in. Sully was just reporting on the condition of our cars. Where is it you want to go?”

“Miranda’s Fashions, downtown. Some dresses I ordered came in and I want to try them on.”

Doyle and Sully were both standing now, and Doreen’s father came around the desk to give her a kiss on the cheek. Doreen was what most people would describe as cute rather than pretty. She looked younger than her age and had a fleshy figure without exactly being plump. By the look on her father’s face, she clearly was adored by him.

“Sully can run you down right now,” Doyle said. “We were finished anyhow.”

“I’ll bring the car right up, Miss Doreen,” Sully said.

“No, I’ll walk down to the garage with you,” Doreen said. “I need the exercise.”

“Do you know where Vera is?” Doyle asked his daughter as they were leaving.

“Out by the pool, last I saw.”

After they left, Doyle watched them through a big picture window as they walked side by side across the manicured lawn. Little sister, he thought. Good. Very good.

Grinning to himself, Doyle returned to his desk and called Sol Silverstein on the lawyer’s cell phone.

“I’m going to take your advice, Sol. I’ll make up some lists today, then tomorrow I’ll have some security people take Vera around to pick up all the cash I have locally. They’ll have a backup car follow them for protection. The outside money, bonds and stuff, I’ll have one of my brokers wire-transfer to a central bank. I’ll have that same bank pick up what I’ve got in the vault and what Vera collects tomorrow. Then I’ll have the bank convert everything to bearer bonds, like you said. I’ve decided to have Vera take it all by charter jet to the Caymans on Saturday. You make the arrangements down there.”

When he finished the call, Doyle went outside and strolled across the west grounds of his estate to the pool to look for Vera.

A mile down the road from the Doyle estate, Sully pulled over and stopped to allow Doreen Doyle to move from the rear seat of the Mercedes-Benz McLaren to the front seat with him.

“What was the big powwow with Daddy all about?” she asked, lighting a forbidden cigarette.

“He wanted to make sure I wasn’t making any moves on you,” Sully said. They leaned together and kissed briefly on the lips.

“If he had any idea the moves you’ve already made,” she declared lightly, squeezing the inside of his thigh, “he’d kill us both.”

“Me, anyway,” Sully agreed. “I’m sure he’d find a way to forgive his little princess. Is everything all right between him and Vera?”

“Far as I know. Why?”

“He asked me a lot of questions today about where I drove her, who she talked to on her cell phone, whether she ever met any men for lunch.”

“Really! You don’t think he thinks she’s cheating on him, do you?”

“I don’t know what to think.”

“I wonder. You know Sol Silverstein was up to see him this morning.”

“Yeah, I saw his car.”

“They had a kind of intense talk out on the east patio while Daddy was having breakfast. I watched them from my bedroom window. Sol tossed papers of some kind onto the table. They both seemed very serious. Daddy got up and paced. And he drummed his fingers on the table, you know how he does sometimes. Could he be thinking about divorcing Vera?”

“I doubt it. Not for cheating, anyway. He knows if she was cheating on him, I’d be suspicious. And he knows I’d tell him.”

“You would?”

“Sure. I work for him, Dorry.”

“That doesn’t keep you from sleeping with his daughter.”

“That’s different. I couldn’t help myself. You seduced me.”

“I seduced you!” Doreen reached to his thigh again, this time pinching it smartly. “You practically raped me the first time we did it after the party that night when you put poor Freddie Carter in the hospital. God, I will never forget that night!”

“Me neither. I think we probably raped each other.”

Now she rubbed his thigh a little higher. “Step on it, baby. Let’s pick up those damned dresses and get out to the room.”

Sully kept a small kitchenette that he rented by the month at a long-term executive motel in a nearby suburb. Feeling warm from Doreen’s touch, he eased down on the accelerator.

Back at the mansion, Vera Doyle was sitting up on the chaise lounge where her husband had found her, staring at him in uncertainty.

“This was all Sol’s idea?” she asked.

“Yeah. He said it was the only thing to do. To be on the safe side, you know.”

Doyle had drawn up a deck chair beside Vera’s chaise lounge, and was drinking another root beer.

“What do you think of his theory about Quinn and the others?”

“I don’t know. I’ve known the four of them since we were all kids together on the Lower West Side. We were all in the West End Dukes together. We were like brothers.”

“People change,” Vera said pragmatically. “Then too, Sol is only guessing. He doesn’t know what the Justice Department is planning.”

“Well, Sol is usually right about those things.”

Vera nodded. “I can’t argue that.” She took the root beer bottle from him and had a sip herself. “It’s the money thing that really bothers me, Gus. That’s a lot of money to be moving at one time. And why me? Can’t somebody else do it?”

“Like who?” Doyle shrugged. “Those four guys are the only ones in the whole of my outfit that I’ve ever trusted. If I only knew which one was about to rat me out, maybe I could have one of the others move the bearer bonds. But that’s the snag: I don’t know.”

“You’ve no idea at all who it might be? Not even a suspicion?”

“None. Ed Quinn and Tom Foley and I grew up together down around Halsted and Van Buren. Mike Dwyer and Dan Connor I met in the reform school out in St. Charles. Charleytown, we called the place.” He grunted quietly. “I can’t imagine any of them betraying me. If only one of them limped.”

“What do you mean?”

“There’s an old Irish prayer. My granddad Padric taught it to me when I was a boy. Goes like this:

“If only that were true,” Vera said.

Doyle took her hand. “Look, sweetheart, the money isn’t going to be that big a deal. After Sol has it all converted into bearer bonds, they’ll be packed neatly in a suitcase. You’ll fly to the Cayman Islands on a chartered plane. I’ll have Sully go with you—”

“Sully? Why Sully? He’s only a driver.”

“And a bodyguard. He’s dependable and very loyal to you. Naturally he won’t know about the bearer bonds; it’ll just be another suitcase. There are several Swiss bank branches in the Caymans; Sol will tell you which one to use. Sully will accompany you to the bank, where a large safe-deposit drawer will already be arranged. Have him wait outside the safe-deposit vault; he won’t ask any questions. You’ll put the bonds in the drawer, get the key, and that will be that. Sully will fly back the next day with the key and leave you to have a nice carefree vacation. I’ll set you up with a suite at the Casuarina; that’s the place you like, remember? As soon as I can, I’ll join you.”

Doyle lifted her hand and sucked on her forefinger. “Say you’ll do this for me, Vera.”

She took her finger out of his mouth and kissed him. “You know I will, Gus. I’d do anything for you, love.”

It took four days to accumulate all the cash into a central downtown bank, and another day for it to be tallied by auditors and the total converted to bearer bonds. The bonds were then moved by a private security firm to Doyle’s mansion, where they were put into his underground vault.

In the interim, Doyle took Sully down to a line of expensive shops on Michigan Avenue and bought him a wardrobe of fashionable vacation wear: sport coats, slacks, shirts — everything he needed to look good with the always elegantly attired Vera.

When they got back from their shopping trip, Doyle himself driving his prized Rolls-Royce Phantom, Doreen came out to meet them in the porte-cochere. As Doyle got out and Sully came around to put the car away, Doreen said, “Sully, did you happen to see my yellow-tinted sunglasses in the Mercedes? I can’t find them anywhere.”

“No, but I’ll look for them, Miss Doreen,” Sully said.

“I’ll ride down to the garage with you in case they’re there.” She kissed her father on the cheek. “Vera wants to talk to you, Daddy. Something about her trip, I think.”

With Doreen in the front seat beside him, Sully guided the big luxury car around a drive that circled the grounds back to the garage building.

“What’s all this about you going somewhere with Vera?” Doreen asked, a little crossly.

“Beats me,” Sully said. “I was hoping you might know. We’re going to the Caymans.”

“For how long?”

“Not long for me. I’m coming back the next day. Vera’s staying on.”

“Something very weird is going on. Sol has been in and out of the house for two days now. And Daddy didn’t hold his usual Tuesday morning meeting with Mr. Quinn and Mr. Foley and the others.”

“I noticed that too. Very unusual.”

Doreen slapped his knee. “I’m not wild about you flying off to some romantic island with Vera.”

“Come on, Dorry. She’s your stepmother.”

“So? She’s not that much older than you. And more than easy to look at, as I’m sure you’ve noticed.”

“You’re talking crazy. This is all business of some kind.”

“It’d better be,” she warned, not a little sternly.

Sully reached over and ran a hand up her skirt.

“Relax, baby. I’m all yours.”

The flight from O’Hare to Grand Cayman was nonstop, six hours, in a luxurious chartered Gulfstream V-SP jet. Sully personally handled all the luggage, including a new Hartmann leather bag Doyle had bought for Sully’s own clothes. In flight, Vera and Sully were served drinks and a three-course gourmet meal pre-ordered by Vera. A limousine met them at Owen Roberts International Airport in Grand Cayman and drove them to the ultra-deluxe Casuarina Resort and Spa, where a two-bedroom beachfront suite had been reserved for Vera. As soon as they had checked in, Vera went into her bedroom and called her husband on one of a dozen disposable, untraceable cell phones she carried.

“We’re here, Gus,” she reported. “No problems. I asked at the desk and was told that the bank is open for another three hours. We’re going there now.”

“Good girl. How’s Sully doing?”

“Like a fish out of water, but he’s okay. I have to admit, it was a good idea sending him. I feel safer with him along. But it’ll be a relief to get this stuff into a bank drawer.”

“To me as well. Let me know when it’s done.”

After the call, Vera gave the cell phone to Sully and watched as he put it under his heel on the patio and crushed it to pieces. Gus, Vera knew, had done the same with the disposable phone on which he had taken her call.

The Cayman Island branch of the Private Bank of Switzerland was on Sheddon Road in George Town. “It’s very easy to find,” Sol Silverstein had told Vera when preparing her for the trip. “Just down from the American Express offices. You’ll ask for a Mr. Unterman. He’ll be expecting you. There’ll be a safe-deposit drawer already rented and waiting for you in one of the private cubicles in their vault. Have Sully take the suitcase in and then wait outside for you. Just put the packets of bearer bonds into the drawer, close it up, and ring for Mr. Unterman. He will lock the closed drawer back into its niche and give you one of the two keys to the niche door; the bank retains the other key — the two keys are different, you see, and it takes both of them to open the door. You send the key he gives you back with Sully the next day. It’s all very simple, really.” Sol had given her a brief hug around the shoulders. “Don’t be nervous, dear. We’ll have this grand-jury mess cleared up for Gus in a couple of weeks at the most. In the meantime, just relax and enjoy yourself.”

“I’ll try,” Vera said.

The federal grand-jury testimony of Edward Quinn, Thomas Foley, Michael Dwyer, and Daniel Connor took place one week later, and consumed only two court days. None of the four gave any testimony that could in any way incriminate Angus Doyle.

But on the third day, a surprise witness did.

“State your name, please,” said the federal prosecutor after the witness had been sworn.

“Vera Kenny.”

“Were you previously Vera Doyle?”

“I was.”

“You were married to Angus Doyle, the subject of this inquiry?”

“I was.”

“Are you now divorced from Angus Doyle?”

“I am.”

“When were you divorced?”

“Five days ago.”

“And where were you divorced?”

“In the Dominican Republic.”

“Your Honor,” the prosecutor said to the presiding federal judge, “at this time we offer the grand jury a certified copy of the Dominican Republic divorce decree of the witness, along with a ruling from the U.S. Department of State confirming that one-party Dominican Republic divorces are recognized as legal in the United States.” He then turned back to the witness. “Miss Kenny, were you recently in the Cayman Islands?”

“I was.”

“What was the purpose of your trip there?”

“To deposit a quantity of bearer bonds into a safe-deposit drawer.”

“What was the value of those bearer bonds?”

“Ten million dollars.”

“Did you deposit them into the safe-deposit drawer?”

“No.”

“What did you do with them?”

“I brought them back to Chicago after my divorce in the Dominican Republic and turned them over to the Department of Justice.”

Again the prosecutor addressed the judge. “Your Honor, we would now offer the grand jury a receipt from the Department of Justice for ten million dollars in bearer bonds received from Miss Kenny.” Facing his witness again, he asked, “From whom did you get the bearer bonds in question?”

“From my former husband, Angus Doyle.”

“The same Angus Doyle who is the subject of this grand-jury inquiry?”

“Yes.”

“Now then, Miss Kenny, in return for turning over the bearer bonds to the government, and for your testimony before this grand jury, have you been promised anything in return?”

“Yes. The Department of Justice has guaranteed me full immunity from any federal prosecution, and the Department of State has promised me a permanent residence visa in a foreign country. I am also being given protective custody until I am safely out of the U.S.”

“That concludes the testimony of this witness,” the federal prosecutor said.

Two hours later, the grand jury voted a true bill against Angus Doyle and indicted him for twenty-one counts of federal income-tax evasion, each count being a separate criminal felony.

Later that day, a federal strike force surrounded and closed off the estate and grounds of Angus Doyle, and Doyle himself was arrested, handcuffed, and taken away.

Doreen Doyle, in a daze bordering on shock, watched as federal agents began swarming into the house. She was standing out front when Sully and several agents walked up from the garage. Hanging around Sully’s neck was a Department of Justice photo-ID credential identifying him as Federal Agent Harry Sullivan O’Keefe.

“You son of a bitch,” Doreen said.

“Give me a minute with her,” Sully instructed the other agents, gesturing them into the house.

“You dirty, lowlife, lying bastard.” No longer in a daze, Doreen was glaring coldly at him.

“What is it that you’re angriest about?” Sully asked. “The arrest of your father? Or the fact that we had sex?”

“Forget about the sex,” she snapped. “I enjoyed it as much as you did. But without my father, I have nothing. I’ll be all alone — no family, no money—”

“Not true,” Sully told her. “Check with Sol Silverstein. You’ll find that you have a five-million-dollar trust that your father set up for you shortly after your mother passed away. The government can’t touch it. You are very well off, Dorry. You can make a good life for yourself.”

“What about Vera? Do you know where she is?”

“She’s on her way to a foreign country where she will be under the protection of the U.S. Embassy. You’ll never see her again.”

“What will happen to my father?”

“He’ll probably receive a fifteen-year sentence on the tax-evasion charges, and new racketeering violations will be brought against him while he’s in prison. Your father is a major crime figure; he’ll probably never be a free man again. Get used to that, Dorry.”

“Stop calling me ‘Dorry.’”

“All right. Miss Doyle, then. I’ll give you an hour to pack your things, then you’ll have to leave the premises.”

She smiled wryly. “I don’t suppose you’ll be driving me away, will you, Sully?”

“I’ll have another agent give you a lift to a downtown hotel.”

She started into the house. At the doorway, she stopped and turned back. “About the sex. I suppose that was just part of your job.”

“No. That was real.”

“Thanks for that much,” Doreen said. She continued inside.

The senior Department of Justice agent in charge of Operation Gus, as it was called, smiled broadly across his desk at Agent Harry Sullivan O’Keefe.

“One hell of a job, Sully. With all the other bits and pieces of intelligence you provided during your undercover assignment, we’ll be able to get Quinn, Foley, Dwyer, and Connor, too. We may even be able to nail Solomon Silverstein on something. I think we can at least get him disbarred.”

“You’ll leave Doreen Doyle’s trust alone, right?” said Sully.

“Absolutely. You kind of liked her, didn’t you? No, we don’t need it for our case. But we’ll attach everything else. And about a year from now, after we get everybody else, they can all have a big reunion at the federal Supermax prison in Colorado. And you, my friend,” he pointed a finger at Sully, “will get a nice commendation from the department.”

“That’s nice,” said Sully, “but I’m more interested in my thirty-two months’ accumulated salary — and the six months paid leave I was promised when I went under.”

“That money has already been credited to your personal bank account, as your monthly salary will be while you’re on leave,” said the senior agent. “And that paid leave officially begins right now. Incidentally, I meant to ask you: When you returned from the Caymans, did Angus Doyle or Sol Silverstein ever seem suspicious about the safe-deposit key you brought back?”

“Not a bit. There was no way they could tell that it came from a Chicago bank. It was just a key with a number on it, like any other safe-deposit key.”

“That was a clever plan you worked out with Vera Doyle, switching keys so that they thought the ten million in bearer bonds that she took down there were still in the Caymans bank, instead of being turned over to us.” The senior agent whistled. “Ten million, Sully. A lot of money.”

“Yes, a lot of money.”

And even more, he thought, was the other fifteen million.

The two men shook hands and Sully left the office.

A week later, in the Air Emirates travel office in Manhattan, a lovely Arab woman, dressed in the airline’s stylish ground employee’s uniform, smiled at Sully and said, “Your visa to the United Arab Emirates is valid for six months, Mr. O’Keefe, but is renewable every six months thereafter. You’ll find that the U.A.R.’s visa restrictions are very flexible; our small federation is actively encouraging Western tourism and retirement.”

“That’s good to know,” Sully said.

“Now then, for your flight over, Air Emirates offers a variety of fares. The most comfortable accommodations, of course, are our new private suites which can be closed off from the rest of the cabin, and which are equipped with individual storage space, a coat closet, vanity desk, and personal minibar. Their extra-large seats recline to become a fully flat bed, and the front wall is a wide-screen LCD monitor featuring six hundred channels of entertainment in all languages. Gourmet food service is available at any time. The flight time is twelve hours, forty-five minutes, and you will be met in Dubai by a chauffeured Bentley sedan. The ticket price is twelve thousand, three hundred and twenty-two U.S. dollars. Shall I book a suite for you?”

“Please do,” Sully said, handing her an American Express Platinum card. Vera had wire-transferred fifty thousand dollars to him and he was standing there in a Canali suit, Hathaway shirt, Gianfranco Ferré necktie, and Ferragamo shoes. Might as well get used to going first class all the way, he thought.

As he waited for his ticket to be processed, Sully took from his pocket and reread the letter Vera had sent to him:

You’ll love Dubai, darling. I’ve already leased an absolutely gorgeous apartment for us at the Jumeirah Beach Residence Hotel, with a terrace overlooking the Arabian Gulf where we can sit and have cocktails while the sun goes down. This city is fantastic: restaurants, clubs, entertainment, shopping like I’ve never imagined. We’ll have a wonderful life here, Sully. Hurry over to me. I’m hungry for you...

Ticket in hand, Sully left the Air Emirates travel office and walked down 59th Street in the direction of his hotel to pack for the midnight departure of his flight.

Vera was right, he thought. They could have a wonderful life together in Dubai. Fifteen million U.S. dollars would buy a lot of good living.

As long as Vera never found out about Doreen.

Copyright © 2009 Clark Howard