Simply Lies

Chapter 33

The first thing Gibson noted about the front room was how neat it was. There was no sign of clutter, just minimal furnishings. Two chairs, one coffee table, one towering shelf bulging with books with wide-ranging titles, a small kitchen area with a sink and cabinets and an under-the-counter fridge. The pictures on the wall looked like they might have been bought at the same print shop: birds, landscapes, a mountain. There were no personal photos, no knickknacks. On the carpet she saw the recent vacuum lines. The counter had a microwave and a few neatly arranged cards wishing happy holidays, and she spied one birthday greeting. Across from the kitchen was the bathroom.

There was an oxygen concentrator machine plugged into a wall outlet, and she saw the tubing snake down the floor and into the rear room. There was no doorway leading into the back room, just a short hall.

“Who is it?” called out the same voice.

“Mr. Trask?” Gibson said as she set the gift bag and flowers down on the counter and walked to the rear of the space. “I wanted to have a chat if that’s okay?”

She took a moment to look around. There was a large flat-screen TV on the wall playing CNN. There was a bed, and a nightstand with several books stacked on it. A recliner was angled next to it. A bookcase standing against one wall was full of tomes with serious titles, mostly dealing with geopolitics. A small window overlooked a courtyard below.

Sam Trask was seated at a desk with a laptop in front of him. A rollator stood at the ready next to him. What Gibson wasn’t seeing in the small apartment intrigued her.

Trask wheeled around in his chair and looked at her. The oxygen tubing was connected to a cannula, which was inserted in his nostrils.

She figured he would be at least six two standing; he was trim and fit looking, despite the need for oxygen. His hair was thin and snow white, his features were chiseled and rugged, his eyes were flint chips, and he had a pugnacious chin. All told, the man seemed to be looking for a confrontation.

“Who are you? And what do you want to chat about?”

“My name is not that important. But why I’m here is important.”

“Explain.”

She could see how he would have done well at the FBI. He was confident but curious. Direct, but there was a subtlety to it.

“Have you ever heard of a man named Harry Langhorne?”

“Mob accountant. He turned state’s evidence and helped to take down several New York and New Jersey crime families, including the Giordanos. He and his family were put into WITSEC. I lost track of him after that.”

“You worked on the task force that brought the mob down.”

“I was only one of many.”

Humility too, thought Gibson. How was Nathan Trask spawned from this?

“What exactly does all that have to do with you?” He looked her over as he took several deep breaths, sucking in extra manufactured oxygen from the tank down the hall. “You would have just been a child at the time.”

“Harry Langhorne had a home in the area under the name Daniel Pottinger. He was found murdered a few days ago at that home.”

Trask took all of this in. Watching him, Gibson could imagine his doing the same mental calculations back at the Bureau as he was briefed by a junior staffer.

“What area exactly?”

This surprised her but she answered him. “An estate called Stormfield, a bit north of Smithfield, right on the James River.”

“How was he murdered?”

“Botulinum, type A.”

“Nasty stuff. It’s not a painless death.”

“I’m sure. But he was already terminal with brain cancer.”

“And so Harry Langhorne finally met his end?”

“Had you met him?”

“I had. Not a nice person, but what would you expect? Out to save his own skin, like the rest of the scum.”

“And his family?”

“What of them?”

“Did you meet them?”

“Yes, briefly. Geraldine, the wife; Francine and Douglas, the children.”

“You have a good memory.” She eyed the cannula.

“My mind is fine but I smoked too much,” he said in answer to this look. “It was my one weakness, but it’s a big one now come home to roost. That and the beginnings of Parkinson’s.” He held out his hand and she saw it quivering slightly.

“I’m sorry.”

“At my age it’s not unexpected. At some point my mind will go, and that will be that.”

“I hope I can handle all that as well as you can when my time comes.”

“I hope you can, too. You remember how you were, and it’s... not easy.”

“I’m sure.”

“You’re not police or you would have flashed your badge. What’s your interest?”

She took out her ProEye credentials.

He inspected them and nodded. “Good firm. You were a worthy competitor to my old shop, Kroll.”

“Thanks. It was rumored that Langhorne got away with a great deal of the mob’s money. He paid cash for the estate to the tune of five million. But word is there was more, a lot more. And if he invested it over the last thirty years or so, the sums would be far larger.”

“And you’re trying to claw these assets back for clients of ProEye? Who exactly would that be?”

“Confidentiality bars me from telling you. I’m sure you can understand.”

There was a twinkle in his eye now that she didn’t particularly get.

“Oh, I know confidentiality rules better than most. You can’t be working on behalf of the descendants of mobsters. ProEye is a legit outfit, so they wouldn’t have accepted a client seeking to get back ill-gotten gains. So I wonder who the client is?”

“Without giving away too much, perhaps those from whom the mob money was originally taken?”

“That would be a lot of people and entities.”

“Yes it would.”

“And what do you want with me?”

She began the spiel she had practiced on the drive over. “We found out about some of Daniel Pottinger’s business associates. They would be prime suspects in his murder. The fact is Harry Langhorne kept right on being a criminal in the persona of Daniel Pottinger. He was operating on a large scale; his list of known criminal endeavors stretches the globe and goes deep into some of the vilest stuff on earth. And he partnered with some people who had the wherewithal to play in that sandbox.”

Gibson stopped talking and just looked at him. Her heart went out to the man when his broad shoulders slumped and his handsome face collapsed and his breathing accelerated slightly.

“I guess that explains why you’re here, then,” he said without much behind it.

“And please believe me that I would not bother you with this if I had any other viable leads.”

He looked her over once more. “Not to sound sexist or misogynistic, though my generation is guilty of that generally, you don’t strike me as the type to be hunting down the likes of my son.”

Gibson thought of her mommy van outside with the two kiddy car seats inside. “Maybe that’s my superpower,” she said. “Everyone underestimates me to the point that I’m ignored when I shouldn’t be.”

He now looked at her with fresh respect. “I can see that. We had some female agents during my tenure that fit that description precisely. Other agents would tell them to get coffee. The next week they’d trump the same guys on a big bust. They just worked harder.”

“There you go.”

“But even so, you never said what you want from me.”

“Whatever you have on your son and his possible dealings with Harry Langhorne aka Daniel Pottinger.”

“I’ve been out of the game a long time.”

She glanced at his computer screen. “When I came in you were on a site that I use to track stolen assets. On the dark web.”

She eyed the open journal next to the computer. “And it doesn’t look to be just for fun.”

He glanced down at his journal. “It keeps my mind active.”

“Other people do Sudoku and Wordle to keep their brains sharp. You hunt criminals.”

“Don’t get carried away. I just mess around to keep busy. People here play bridge endlessly. I hate card games.”

She looked around. “You also have no ego wall. Diplomas, commendations, awards, photos of you shaking hands with presidents. Nothing to show what you used to do. And I know you have all of those things to show off because I researched you before coming here. You have every award the FBI gives out, plus a slew of other ones from the federal government in general, and five other countries with which you worked on complex multijurisdictional investigations. France and the UK made you an honorary member of the DGSE and MI6, respectively. You’re on the Wall of Fame at Interpol. Four presidents called you to the White House to take a picture for a job well done. But you choose not to display any of that. Now, that doesn’t strike me as a man in retirement looking to the past. It smacks of a person still very much engaged and looking ahead, despite some age-related infirmities.”

He sat back, drumming his fingers on the arm of his chair. “How much time do you have?”

“All the time you need, Mr. Trask.”