Simply Lies

Chapter 31

Gibson watched her children eat their dinners, or rather Tommy wolf his down and Darby pick at hers. It was annoying but she could understand it. Gibson had been the same way when she was a kid. Her brothers had eaten everything in sight while she had been indifferent to food and thin as a rail. She touched her hips and closed her eyes.

Those were the days.

Later, she put the kids to bed and went to her office. She stared at the Batphone for about ten minutes before hitting the send button.

“Now is not a good time,” Clarisse said.

“Then why answer?”

“I thought it might be important. Is it?”

“I went by Nathan Trask’s place.”

“You told me that already.”

“But we didn’t finish our discussion. How in the hell do you expect me to ever get a face-to-face with the man? Stealth, as you suggested, isn’t going to cut it, unless I can become invisible.”

“I didn’t think it was my job to do your job.”

“I don’t remember being hired by you to do a job!” Gibson snapped. “Or did my paycheck go astray?”

“You are in this knee-deep, no, make that ass-deep. If Trask is involved in Langhorne’s death he knows all about you already.”

“You sound flustered.”

“Maybe I am. And maybe I don’t need to be your self-starter, Mickey. I thought you could motivate yourself. You’re a smart girl — act like it.”

“Maybe we should meet. On a Zoom.”

“Why?”

“I like to know who I’m dealing with.”

“You already know who you’re dealing with. Me.”

“You’re just a voice on the other end of the ether.”

“A voice who has spent quite a bit of time holding your hand and leading you down the path you need to go down. I suggest, from now on, you take it from here.”

The line went dead and Gibson slowly put the phone down.

She picked up the yearbook and went back over the pages. Her focus was now on some of the people in the audience. She went through them one by one. But that didn’t make sense to her. Why would Francine Langhorne be in the audience in Philly watching a college performance starring Mickey Rogers?

But then her focus changed — to the stage wings.

The backstage crew. They were typically all students at Temple and also some folks who worked at the university. She had helped a number of the students, becoming a mentor and shoulder to cry on when auditions or their tests went badly.

She took pictures of all the images with her phone and then sent them to her email. She fired up her computer and brought the images up on the large screen and then zoomed in on the faces in the wings. There were a lot of them. Stage productions needed a great deal of manpower whether in college or on Broadway. She went through the pictures one by one. Nothing clicked.

But why would it? You have photos of Francine Langhorne as a child.

Wait, could our paths have crossed when I was a cop? She knew I had been on the force in Jersey City. Did I arrest her at some point? I met a lot of people back then. And she obviously knew I worked at ProEye. But I really haven’t met anyone in person at ProEye. It’s basically all done on the computer.

She sighed and sat back. This was getting her nowhere fast.

Okay, set this aside for now and work to your strengths.

And that meant trying to find Pottinger’s assets by way of her cyber-sleuthing.

She obtained some of Pottinger’s personal information from his purchase of Stormfield. She used this to start building a baseline of the man’s financial activities.

And then, surprisingly, the Batphone rang. She answered it.

Clarisse said, “I apologize for being so abrupt before. I did have something else on my mind, but it was no excuse for rudeness.”

“Okay,” said Gibson grudgingly, taken aback by this abrupt turnaround.

“As for Trask, here is some advice. He has an army of aides and bodyguards and all the entourage of the king he thinks he is.”

“Which was my point. So how can I—” began Gibson.

“Why do you think he built a place in Virginia Beach when he could live anywhere in the world?”

“Okay, why?”

“His father, Sam Trask, lives in Virginia Beach, too,” said Clarisse.

“What! And you didn’t tell me this before because why?”

“I like to see people find out things for themselves.”

“Trask Senior obviously knows what his son really is,” noted Gibson.

“He does. Apparently during his career at the Bureau, they built a formidable case against his son. His father, of course, would have been no part of it because of conflict rules, but I heard that he was actually the leading force behind the scenes. But the case fell apart when a group of women, who could have sent Trask to prison for sex trafficking, were burned up in a hotel fire in San Antonio.”

“Trask’s work?” asked Gibson.

“Obviously, but nothing could be proven. Sam Trask retired from the Bureau at age fifty-seven, which is mandatory for special agents. After that he worked at Kroll International for over a decade. You know them?”

Gibson said, “Of course, one of the biggest and best known private security and investigation firms in the world. They’re a competitor of ProEye.”

“He did specialized work for them, using his breadth of knowledge and Rolodex acquired at the Bureau. His cases took him all over the world, and there was overlap with the sort of crimes his son was engaged in.”

“So you mean the father was still trying to take down his son?”

“It’s almost biblical, isn’t it?” remarked Clarisse. “Sam Trask is now eighty years old, retired, widowed, and has lived for five years at The Feathers, an assisted living center in Virginia Beach. He has some health issues, but word is the man still has his mental faculties.”

“And his son built that monstrosity after his father moved there?” said Gibson.

“Sort of like, ‘Look at me, I have this awesome place and you’re the one imprisoned at an assisted living facility.’ ”

“If I were Sam I’d up and move somewhere else. Make his son shell out the bucks to build another place.”

Clarisse said, “I’m not sure Sam Trask would give him the satisfaction of knowing that his son is still getting in his father’s head.”

“Does Nathan ever visit him?”

“His father obviously wants nothing to do with him, so he has refrained from trying. So maybe there’s your in.”

“What do you mean?” asked Gibson.

“Sam Trask knows more about his son than maybe anyone alive.”

“If that’s so, why hasn’t the son taken out the father?”

“He would be the prime suspect if that happened, and that would turn the FBI’s attention to him again. His father can’t really hurt him now, so why make that sort of trouble for himself?”

“So you want me to go and talk to the father?” asked Gibson.

“Do you have a better idea? Apparently not, because you called me initially complaining you had no shot at nailing Nathan Trask.”

“Whoa, nailing him?”

“Okay, getting information about him,” amended Clarisse.

“But the Langhorne murder was very recent. Sam Trask has been out of the game for years. What would he know about his son’s activities since then?”

“I said he retired. I didn’t say he was out of the game. And what will it hurt to go and ask the man?”

“But won’t Trask have him watched, especially if his father knows so much?” noted Gibson.

“Nothing that Sam Trask knows has been enough to touch the son. And if he is being watched, then you need to use ingenuity to get around that.”

“You make it sound so easy,” retorted Gibson.

“I didn’t involve you in this because it was easy. I brought you in because you’re good.”

“I’m a former cop. I can’t flit around conning people and doing illegal things.”

“Really? Then how did you find out that Daniel Pottinger was really Harry Langhorne? I would imagine you did some conning and flitting and illegal shit to score that info.”

Okay, I walked right into that one. “What do you think Sam Trask can tell me?”

“Isn’t that the whole point of asking? Okay, I’m done hand-holding. Oh, and one more thing.”

“Yeah?” said Gibson.

“A much younger Sam Trask was on the FBI task force that took down the mob bosses Harry Langhorne was working with. But I’m sure you already knew that, right?”

And with that Parthian shot, the line went dead again. And Gibson didn’t think Clarisse would be calling back a second time.

And maybe she’s right. I am half-assing this because I keep oscillating between whether I really want to be involved or not.

She went online and looked up The Feathers. It was quite an upscale place, about a dozen rungs above any place Gibson would be able to afford when her time came to retire.

The resident list wasn’t available, of course; she looked over the facility schematic. It had a memory wing for dementia patients, a library, a game room, a hair salon, an outdoor courtyard in the very center, fireplaces, a dining room, and other community spaces.

She was surprised when her Batphone dinged. Not a call but definitely a communication.

She opened the email and saw a picture of a distinguished-looking, elderly man. Written under it was: “Sam Trask. Good hunting.”

She studied the picture, and then thought how best to do this.

And when she had struck on a plan, Gibson had to admit that a bit of the excitement lost from her earlier professional life was starting to seep back into her. And it wasn’t just her time as a cop, but also her stint as a college thespian.

She checked on the kids, and woke Tommy from a devilish nightmare and held him until he fell back asleep. She had had night terrors as a child and understood quite clearly how bad they could be.

Gibson went to her room, set her alarm, and pulled the covers over herself, thinking of what she had once been and perhaps what she still could be.