The Garden of Betrayal

30

“Run it down for me again,” Reggie said.

I was at the chart on the wall, walking him through the connections while Claire and Kate listened. My weariness had vanished.

“Theresa was the one who passed me the Saudi information,” I said, touching one of the boxes Kate had drawn earlier. “She was introduced to me by Alex. Walter and I suspect the Saudi information actually came from the U.S. government, by way of Senator Simpson. Narimanov confirmed the government link and said that Alex had been trying to back-check the information through Washington.”

Reggie rocked backward in his chair, fingers laced behind his head.

“I like the fact that this Roxas woman is a direct link between Munoz and what’s happening now.” He gestured to the chart. “It tells me you’re on the right track with all of this. But I still got a big problem understanding the logistics of what happened to Kyle.”

“The logistics or the motive?” Claire asked.

“Both, but let’s stick with the logistics. I’m going to start by assuming that Munoz was a good guy. Anyone have a problem with that?”

I glanced at Claire and Kate, and then shrugged.

“Fine. Then I’m further going to assume that it wasn’t Munoz who moved the car. You lure a guy into a motel room to whack him, you don’t let him run out for cigarettes. All the parking-lot camera saw was a big guy in a camel-hair coat. Could have been anyone.”

“Okay,” I said.

“So, these people have got this carefully choreographed operation going on to discredit and murder Munoz, and in the middle of it, they take time out to have one of their people dress up like Munoz and drive his car all the way up to your neighborhood. And their objective is to kidnap a child who they couldn’t possibly have expected to find on the street at that time of night.”

“Maybe they were looking for my dad,” Kate offered in a small voice.

“I don’t buy it,” Reggie said. “Your schedule’s never been predictable, has it, Mark?”

“Not really.”

“And if they were there for you, what would have put them on to Kyle? They couldn’t have been expected to know what your family looked like. On top of which, why bother mixing you up with Munoz at all? If they wanted to hit you, too, why not do it another day? Why make things so complicated?”

The answer hit me like a bullet. It was the mention of family that did it.

“What?” Kate demanded apprehensively, her eyes fixed on me.

“They weren’t there for Kyle, or for me. They were there for Claire.” I sagged against the wall, my knees weak. “They’d researched my family. They knew Claire left the apartment at the same time every night to go to work. But she didn’t go that evening, because I’d flown to London on short notice.”

The shock I felt was reflected on Claire and Kate’s faces.

“Reggie?” Claire breathed.

“Makes sense,” he answered softly. “They’d painted Munoz as a violent woman abuser and put him together with the car on the security video in the right time window.”

I shook my head at him, loath to have him speculate on the details, but Claire caught the gesture out of the corner of her eye.

“Enough,” she said angrily. “Stop trying to protect us from the truth. I want to know exactly what Reggie thinks was supposed to have happened that night.”

“You sure?” he asked.

“Yes.”

He reached for a cigarette and then caught himself.

“My best guess is that Roxas-the girlfriend-lured Munoz to the motel and kept him busy in bed while a guy wearing a similar coat took the car. He and an accomplice or two drove uptown to grab Claire. Could have gone a couple of different ways from there, but, bottom line, Claire and Munoz were supposed to have been found dead together the next morning-in the motel, or in the car, or somewhere else. Cops looking into it would have figured things went south somehow with the hooker, so Carlos went out looking for entertainment. He grabbed Claire off the street, and then things got away from him. Murder-suicide. Maybe they even planned to have Roxas put a call in to 911 as the hooker, saying some john she picked up went crazy and tried to beat the crap out of her, and that she had to flee down the fire stairs. It wouldn’t have taken a lot to sell the story, given the security video and his supposed history.”

I felt sick to my stomach.

“Gallegos told me that Carlos’s enemies wanted to discredit him, to embarrass his political allies. The Venezuelan press hammered him for having been with a hooker when he died. Imagine what they would have done with this story.”

“Suppose you’re right,” Claire said. She was ashen and breathing heavily, but she looked stronger than I felt. “Why Kyle?”

“Maybe they improvised-which confirms they had a motive beyond just discrediting Munoz.” He glanced at me pityingly. “Only one common result of hurting a man’s wife or child. To incapacitate the man.”

“It had to have been something I was working on,” I whispered. “Something they wanted me to leave alone.”

“And they didn’t want to come right out and kill you,” Reggie added, “because the police would have dug into possible motives. This way they discredited Munoz, knocked you for a loop, and maybe even sent a message to some third parties about what happens to people who don’t play ball. It all fits.”

“And if I hadn’t flown off to London unexpectedly, it all would have worked.”

Our stunned silence was broken by Reggie’s cell phone. He checked the number and answered it, stepping into one of the bedrooms to talk.

“Gallegos,” Claire said urgently. “You need to get to him, Mark. You need to find out who told him to keep his mouth shut.”

“He won’t tell me.”

“So, make him.”

I didn’t have to ask what she meant. Kate was biting her lip, looking troubled.

“No. Gallegos is innocent. Even if I could make him talk, he’d likely only give us another Venezuelan. And we don’t want that guy. We want the guy behind him, the person who was pulling the strings.”

“We start with whoever Gallegos gives us and work our way up the line,” Claire insisted.

“How? These people are diplomats, Claire. Whoever leaned on Gallegos probably isn’t even in America.” I shook my head. “There’s a better way.”

“The bribe,” Kate said. “The one that Carlos turned down.”

“Right. The bribe was shares in an undervalued oil company. I make it even money that I tumbled onto the scam somehow and started asking questions. We need to go through my old files and see what pops out. If we can figure out which oil company it was, I might be able to follow the money back to the source.”

Claire nodded hesitantly and then glanced at our chart on the wall.

“You suspect that Simpson used Theresa Roxas to get the Saudi data to you. Does that make him the source?”

I rubbed my neck, trying to imagine why Simpson would have been bribing Venezuelan diplomats.

“No idea.”

“And what about Alex?”

“What about him?”

“He lied to you about knowing Theresa Roxas,” she said, her face hard. “Does that tell us anything?”

“Only that someone leaned on him as well,” I answered, feeling pained. “But I have to believe he would have come clean with me if he’d been able to establish that the Saudi information was false. He was a friend.”

“Is that why Rashid was killed?” Kate asked. “To prevent him from telling you the truth?”

“Maybe,” I said, beginning to feel overwhelmed again. The more we learned, the more complicated things got. “Or to prevent him from telling me something about Carlos Munoz’s murder, or Kyle’s kidnapping, or something else we haven’t figured out yet.”

“We need to think more about this Saudi connection,” Kate insisted. “We need to figure out…”

Reggie walked back into the room and cleared his throat, his expression grim.

“I have some news,” he said. “It’s not good.”

Claire and Kate rose simultaneously and came to me. I put an arm around each and pulled them tight.

“The call I just took was from the guy leading the search team in Staten Island. He got lucky and bumped into a couple of old-timers who like to fish out that way. They knew exactly where Vinny’s boss had been dumping cars. Search team pulled the BMW out of the water about an hour and a half ago.”

“And?” Claire asked breathlessly.

“And there were human remains in the trunk.”

Kate buried her face in my shoulder, and I felt Claire trembling.

“Were they able to make an identification?”

“Take a day or two for dental,” Reggie answered. “But the remains were wrapped in a Gore-Tex coat, and the coat held up well. Technicians rinsed it off and found a name written in the lining. Your name, Mark. I’m sorry.”

Three Days Later