Devil's Run (30 page)

John Roma had clearly
gone crazy.

“Are you implying she
knew what was going to happen?”

“Don't be ridiculous,”
he said, flatly. “She was there on a case.”

“What case?”

“Suspected corruption in
federal law enforcement.”

“What kind of
corruption?”

“Payoffs from drug
dealers. You weren’t the only one who thought someone high up at JFK might be involved
in drug smuggling.” He looked at me intensely. “Think, did she ever say
anything to you?”

“She wouldn’t. We never
talked to each other about our investigations.”

“My source at Justice
says your name was high on the suspect list.”

“That’s bullshit.”

“No, it isn’t. Little
bits and pieces, but they were pointing in your direction. Mary felt the
so-called evidence was being spoon fed to them.”

“I was being set up.”

He nodded. “Exactly.
Once things started pointing towards you and Treasury, their internal affairs
took over and Mary was officially reassigned. But she didn’t let it go, not
when it could affect you. She was running down a lead that day. Her visit to
the towers was not authorized.”

I didn’t know what to
say. My mind was racing.

“Craig. Think about it.
What is the one common thread running through all this? Who was in a position
to frame you? Who stalled your investigation at Kennedy? Who else was at the
Towers that morning?”

“Imperatrice? He’s a
pencil pushing bureaucrat.”

“That’s how you saw him.
That’s how he wanted to be seen. Just before the attacks he contacted internal
affairs with his suspicions about you.”

“Jesus.”

“What is it?”

“Carl.”

“Your DEA friend?”

“Yes. Something he said
the other day. Mary was asking him questions about Imperatrice just before her
death.”

Roma folded his hands on
top of the folder. “Imperatrice has juice. While he was at Customs he
cultivated a lot of contacts. Once he left government service, he started
exploiting them. He has dirt on just about everybody, and his close
relationship with Senator Canfield makes him one of the most powerful and
dangerous men in Washington.”

“Is he in charge?”

Roma shook his head. “I
don’t think so.”

“Sandoval thinks it’s de
Verdugo. That he faked his own death and is using Cory as a front.”

“That I know is not
true. We confirmed the body in the plane using DNA and dental records. Besides,
he’d turned legit years ago. After Rojas was killed and the cartel destroyed, he
focused on the business. Turned out to be pretty good, too. That company of his
became a money machine.”

“So the plane crash was
an accident?”

“No. It was definitely
murder. Someone sabotaged the oxygen system on the corporate jet. They all
passed out before anyone noticed and were dead soon after that. The plane flew
until the fuel ran out and crashed near the Canadian border.”

“Who did it?”

“No one knows. The
investigators figured it was someone from the past, closing down the last of
Rojas’ people.”

“So who is running
whatever is going on?”

“I was hoping you could
tell me.”

“All I can tell you is
it’s not Kohl.”

He looked at me
curiously. “What makes you say that?”

“He didn’t know who I
was when he confronted me in town. As far as he knew, I was just some private
eye the police told him about. But, I was already being followed and
Imperatrice talked to me in Vermont. If Kohl was the boss, he’d have already
known who I was.”

“Any guesses?”

“Right now, my money is
on Canfield.”

“Canfield? The man wants
to be President. Why would he get involved in something criminal?”

“Maybe because he knows
he’ll never be President.”

“What would stop him?”

“If a drug lord’s
granddaughter for a wife isn’t enough,” I said, “maybe the fact that he’s gay.”
I smiled at his lack of reaction. “My revelation did not come as a shock to
you.”

“There have been rumors,
but in this day and age people may be ready. Coming out may not be a
disqualifier for him.”

“It is if you’re a
Republican and a Mormon, particularly when you’ve spent all this time deceiving
everyone. There was that guy in California who ran for the Senate as
conservative Republican, then came out when he lost. He never ran for a
substantial office again.”

“I remember. I’m
curious, how did you find out? That gut instinct again?”

“Sort of. I
thought Canfield and his right hand man looked a little too chummy. And there
is no spark between him and that firecracker of a wife. Then Sandoval called
him a
puta
.”

“That means whore.”

“Yes, but when used
about a man it’s slang for homosexual. If Sandoval knows, it must be common
knowledge in Washington.”

“Not really. Rumors, of
course, but nothing substantial. There are key people in both parties who do
know,” he said, “And some in the press, but these are all political people.
They know that once you play that card publicly, it’s burned for good.”

“So they’re saving it in
case he runs for President.”

“Yes. In the meantime,
they can use that knowledge as, let’s call it leverage, to convince him to
support a bill. Or a cause.”

“Like the border fence?”
Roma nodded and I said, “If he knows his Presidential ambitions are checkmated,
it might just make him mad enough to get involved in something criminal. He
said Imperatrice has been advising him for years, and as a Senator he has
access to all kinds of classified information. He may have known about Cory’s
family, seen her as more than a beard.”

“In any case,” said
Roma, “he has some lovely playmates. Besides this link to the Rojas clan,
there’s Kohl. He is actually Arnwalten Kohlreiter, a former East German spy.
And those men you killed in Vermont? Both were highly trained soldiers. One was
ex-Special Forces, the sniper was former GSG9.”

“They’re using
mercenaries as muscle. Better than ordinary criminals; they have discipline and
they know how to take orders.”

“And they make good
assassins,” said Roma. “There’ve been a number of killings of cartel members in
Mexico, Ecuador and Peru that look like the work of military trained death
squads.”

“Like the one at the clinic.
If you know about Kohl, what’s he doing running free in the wild?”

“We let him. He was a
deep cover agent for the Stasi in West Germany. Infiltrated a big industrial
concern and used his position to steal trade secrets and patent information. We
suspect he did a little wet work on the side. Anyway, he saw the writing on the
wall, no pun intended, and let us turn him a couple of years before communism
collapsed.”

“And for that he got a
new identity and a free pass.”

“Something like that.
He’s been suspected of having a hand in several shady operations over the
years, but he’s clever. No one’s been able to pin anything on him.”

“So now I have all this
information, but I don’t know why. What do you want from me?”

He sort of smiled. “What
is your take on what’s going on up there?”

“Offhand I’d say they’re
smuggling coke. It’s a nice set up. Remote, defensible, with a private airfield
and clients with diplomatic immunity.”

He was already shaking
his head. “No, that isn’t it. Not enough flights, not enough cargo unaccounted
for.”

“Maybe it’s just in a
trial phase. They’re moving small amounts to test it.”

“I don’t think so. We’ve
got a CI on the airport staff. The only suspicious thing he’s ever seen was a
truck carrying off two drums of jet fuel.”

“Is he sure it was jet
fuel?”

“Watched them load the
drums from the airport refueling truck.”

“Where did they go?”

“We don’t really know,
although that piece of metal you found tells us where some of them went.”

“The drums, I’m
guessing, were yellow.”

“Yes.”

“So what were drums of
jet fuel doing in a pile of lumber on a ski slope?”

“We don’t know.”

“You don’t know much.”

“And we never will,
unless I get more information.”

“Hence our meeting in
such swanky surroundings. You’re still in the market for a loose cannon that
can be plausibly denied.”

“Someone, in fact,” he
said, “who would be tied to a Mexican drug lord, which is why you still have
that money belt.”

“Devious and ruthless.”
I gave him a pout. “Do I mean nothing to you?”

“I’m at a standstill.
I’d be laughed out of court if I went for a search warrant. Besides,
Imperatrice is plugged in all over Washington. I haven’t got a prayer with a
normal warrant. What I need is something I can spin as a national security
issue, something I can take to the FISA Court, so Imperatrice won’t get wind of
it until the FBI SWAT team fast ropes onto their patio.”

“I can see where this is
going.”

“We let word leak that
you were dead, so they aren’t watching for you. Do for me what you did for
Raviv. Find a way back in there and get me something.”

“What’s in it for me?”

“You stay out of jail.”

“I like jail. It’s
peaceful.”

“In there you won’t find
the boy,” he said. “Or Raviv’s killer.”

“Tell me more.”

Roma had me flown to Denver,
where I was left on my own. I used a car service to take me the final leg back
to Purchas, arriving shortly before nine in the morning. I found a ski shop and
outfitted myself with a set of K2s, a pair of Salomon ski boots, and
appropriate clothing. As an added bonus, the shopping spree netted me a free
full-day, all mountain ticket. The girl at the register was a little surprised
when I paid with cash. I thought for a moment she was going to run the bills
through the credit card reader, but her boss showed her how a cash transaction
worked.

They let me change in
the store, and I walked out ready to go with my street clothes and ski boots in
shopping bags. I picked up a small pair of binoculars at Brookstone before
catching the trolley to the main lodge.

I stowed my stuff in a
coin operated locker and hit the slopes, skiing for a couple of hours to get a
feel for the geography and warm up muscles still sore from the other day’s
skiing. In the early afternoon I skied off on the side trail that led to Boyd’s
chalet, taking up a position just inside the trees where I could see his study
windows. I focused the binoculars and dialed his number on one of my new
throwaway cells.

“Jeffrey Boyd,” he said,
after three rings.

“Nick Craig.”

I heard a little intake
of breath, which was followed by a long pause.

“Did you miss me?” There
was no answer. “You thought I was dead, didn’t you? I get that a lot.
Especially from someone who set me up. Now, where are you?”

“Uh, my house,” he said.

“Alone? No Ms. Ricasso?”

“No. Look, Craig-”

“No, you look. I don’t
know what your friends there are telling you, but if you want to find out what
happened to your son, you’ll meet with me. You might even save your own life.”

Again, a pause, but I
could tell the phone wasn’t covered. Then I saw him, the phone to his ear,
walking up to the window.

“Okay,” he said. “When?”

“This afternoon. Take
the Sidewinder chairlift up and dial this number when you get off. No later
than two-thirty.”

“You mean on the
mountain?”

“Sure. Get out and enjoy
this beautiful day.” Actually, it wasn’t looking that great. Thin yellowish
clouds were moving in from the west and the air had a nasty bite. “And come
alone,” I said. “Don’t tell anyone, and make sure you aren’t followed. I
guaran-fucking-tee that you are on thin ice with these people.”

I hung up and skied down
to the Sidewinder lift. While in the lift line, I slipped the phone into the
pocket of the woman in front of me. Seven minutes later I was at the top,
positioning myself where I could watch the lift and not be too obvious about
it.

The weather was
deteriorating rapidly. The dark gray overcast was thick and menacing, and ice
pellets propelled by the steadily increasing wind began to rattle against my
goggles. No one lingered after getting off the lift. The skiers quickly moved
down the slope, and the snowboarders spent less time than usual collapsed in
the snow like battlefield casualties.

To me it seemed like
normal skiing conditions, but I supposed western skiers are spoiled. The number
of people coming up the lift diminished as I waited, until there were lots of
empty chairs. After twenty minutes I spotted Boyd, the only guy in this weather
with no helmet and his jacket unzipped. He skied off the lift and stopped to
look around. When no one approached him, he pulled out his cell phone and
dialed. After a minute, he pulled it away from his ear and looked at it. Then
he spoke into it again and hung up. Again, he looked around as if expecting a
revelation.

I used one of my two
remaining cell phones to dial his number.

“Craig?”

“No, Bode Miller. Are
you there?”

“Yes, I’m here. Who was
that woman?”

“What woman?”

“The one who answered
your phone.”

“I don’t know what
you’re talking about. Are you alone?”

“Yes.”

“Take the Ridge Runner Gondola
to the top. I’ll wait for you there.”

“Alright.”

I snapped the phone
shut, and watched him. He put the phone away and skated off towards the gondola
station. I watched for a moment to see if he had a tail, but no one seemed to
be following him. I skated into the nearly empty gondola line, right behind
Boyd. A group of teenage girls skied in behind me.

“How many?” said the
attendant when Boyd reached the end of the line.

“Two,” I said.

Boyd recognized my voice
and looked sharply at me.

“How many?” the
attendant said to the girls.

“Five.”

“Okay,” he said to Boyd
and me, “you two.”

We put our skis in the
rack and climbed inside the gondola cabin. The door closed and we skittered
forward.

“Alright Craig, what is
all this cloak and dagger about?”

“You mean besides the
fact you set me up to be murdered and I should break your legs and leave you in
the snow to die?”

“You could try.”

“I would succeed. Those
health club muscles might impress the ladies, but I’d fuck you up good and you
know it.”

His face told me he did,
but he struggled to be defiant.

“So? What is this about
my son?”

“As you know, he wasn’t
at the clinic. I believe he’s dead. I think your friends killed him.”

“You’re wrong. They gave
me their word.”

“Their
word
?”

“Yes. He was here, yes.
With his friends, yes. They killed them, and they would have killed Ken, but he
escaped, like the one they shot in Vermont. They didn’t know it was Ken that
night, only later, when they found the van.”

“So where is Ken?”

“I don’t know. Maybe
he’s hiding, afraid to contact me because he suspects I’m involved.”

“He’s an amateur,” I
said. “The pros are dead. I find it hard to believe he’s managed to stay alive
and in hiding for two months.”

“It’s no longer your
business.” He looked exhausted, played out. “I’ll pay you what I owe you. Just
drop the whole thing.”

“And just go home?” He
nodded. “How long you think I’d live? A day? A week?”

“Not my concern.”

“Nice guy. What about
your own life? How long you figure they’re going to let you live?”

“They need me,” he said,
sounding not entirely convinced.

“For what? The money
laundering?”

His head jerked around
so hard I thought it might snap off.

“It wasn’t hard,” I
said. “Big time lawyer and finance guy, working for a company funded by drug
money. How’s it work? Something to do with the charity?”

Even though his face was
pinched from the cold, I could see the blood drain away. Real fear grew in his
eyes. We bumped over the rollers at one of the towers. Boyd looked up, as if
startled by the vibration.

“You’re not an idiot, Boyd,”
I said. “The minute the trouble with your son started, they began looking for
alternatives to whatever you cooked up for them. When they have a new pipeline
for that piece, you’re a dead man. Your son and his friends cost them too much
in personnel and money.”

“Fucking environmental
whackos.” He shook his head. “Eco warriors, they call themselves. How they got
Ken to go along, I’ll never know.”

“A honey trap, a cute
girl willing to go to bed with him. He was a gift from heaven, someone with
intimate knowledge of The Retreat, money to burn, and a jones to show his daddy
he wasn’t a spineless wimp.”

He gave me a look of
hatred. “You son of a bitch.”

“Too bad Ken didn’t know
the truth about Daddy’s friends. Epstein and Roger thought they were the
ruthless ones. They were bush league compared to this bunch.”

His face softened and
took on a beaten look. “I had no idea he had anything to do with the fire. I
just knew he’d gone missing from school.”

“Of course you didn’t.
Your friends made sure of that. They covered up his involvement. Took the van
back to Seattle and sanitized it. Wiped his computer clean and stole the girl’s
laptop, just in case there was anything incriminating on them. Ask yourself,
why did they keep his involvement in the fire a secret from you?”

“I don’t know.”

“I do. Because if you
knew he was in danger from them you might go to the Feds and cut a deal. So
they kept you in the dark. But, that had an unexpected consequence. You hired
someone to find him.”

“They were worried you
were a Fed, and this whole private investigator thing was a cover, especially
after the FBI released you in New York.”

“So they kept me alive,
not wanting to kill a federal agent.”

“Right.”

“But, they don’t think
I’m a fed anymore, do they?”

He looked away. “From
what I heard, Imperatrice never believed it. He wanted to kill you along with
those people in Vermont, but the boss said no. He figured if you were a fed
killing you would bring too much heat.”

“He? Who is the boss?”

“I don’t know. I heard
his voice for the first time the other day, on a speaker phone.”

“Was Canfield there?”

“No it was just me and
Kohl and Richard.”

“Could it have been
Canfield?”

“I don’t know. They’d
done something electronically to disguise the voice.”

 “And that’s when I
became expendable?”

“Imperatrice’s contacts
in Washington finally confirmed you were on your own. That’s when they decided
to get rid of you in Mexico. There was already something planned. You’d be just
one unidentified body among many.”

“And so you set me up.”

“What choice did I have?
They said it was a test of my loyalty. It was you or me. And that they wouldn’t
hurt Ken.”

“Tell me, how does the
laundering scam work?”

He was startled by the
change in tack. “What does it matter?”

“Indulge me. Besides,
that was our deal if I went to Mexico.”

He shrugged. “We smurf
the dirty money into the charity.”

“Must take an awful lot
of smurfs.”

“You don’t need too
many, really. I use a computer program that creates individual records from
schools, conventions, street corners, convenience store jars, mostly cash
donations. The dirty cash is mixed in with the clean. The money flows through
the charity, which takes a percentage off the top for expenses.”

“This is about mosquito
nets, right?”

“Yeah, to prevent
malaria in Africa and parts of Asia. We claim it takes five dollars to
manufacture and another fifteen for packing, shipping, and distribution of each
net, plus the cost of advertising and public relations for the charity. The
money goes to a shell company that jobs the nets out to small manufacturers in
various African countries.”

“Also shell companies, I
assume?”

“Yes.”

“Do any of these
companies actually do any manufacturing, packing, shipping, and distributing?”

“No. Of course not,
except for some distribution. We buy the nets in bulk from a company in Nigeria
for eighty-seven cents apiece.”

“And if I somehow
followed the tangled trail of those shell companies back to where the cash ends
up, I’d find Verdugo, wouldn’t I?”

“Yes.”

“Very cute. You must be
proud of yourself.”

He said nothing.

“They killed your
girlfriend, you know.”

“What the hell are you
talking about?”

“It never occurred to
you? Your secretary is murdered and the efficient Ms. Ricasso magically appears
to take up the slack?”

“That’s insane.”

“Is it? Was that about
the time you were setting up the laundering operation? Think that’s a
coincidence? They wanted someone in place to keep an eye on you, so your
girlfriend dies and Ms. Ricasso takes her place.” I leaned in towards him.
“They murdered the woman you loved, just to protect a business investment. Do
you really think they’d stop at your son? Or you?”

He looked haggard. “Why
are you telling me this?”

“You’re getting me in.”

“In?”

“The Retreat. I need to
get into those administration offices.”

“You’re going up there?
You’re insane. They’ll kill you.”

“I’ll kill you if you
don’t help me. Besides, it may be your last chance to save yourself.”

He weighed his options
for a few moments.

“What do you want me to
do?”

That was a little quick.
My antennae went up a little, but the gondola was approaching the terminal.

“I’ll tell you after we
get off.”

The attendant helped us
out of the gondola, which continued marching along while we retrieved our skis.

“Where to?” he said,
after we’d walked out into the storm.

“Deer Trail.”

He followed my lead.
Once we were out of sight of the gondola terminal, we stopped.

“What now?”

“I need your parka and
your access key.”

“My what?”

“Your white card. Your
security key. And the password.”

“I don’t know it. Access
is tied to the individual card holder and I have to be escorted into the secure
areas. So I don’t know the code; only that it’s changed every day.”

“I just need to get
inside. That card gets me on the chairlift and into the tunnel, right?”

“Yes, but you won’t get
far.”

“You let me worry about
that.”

We stared at each other
for a long moment. Then he took off his jacket. Before handing it to me he
tried to take his phone.

“Leave the phone,” I
said.

“Why?”

“If they’re tracking
you, I don’t want them to see me as you in one place and your phone in
another.”

He hesitated, then put
the phone back in the parka and handed it over. I gave him my jacket.

“Card’s in the right
hand pocket,” he said.

I found  it and
took it out to confirm what he said.