Dollar Down (2 page)

I also gave myself a twenty percent pay raise over
what I was going to charge Trevor. Good help is hard to
find.

At straight-up six o'clock, Ms. Duveau's secretary
escorted me into her office. She cleared the paperwork with
Houston in twenty minutes. I signed, took the oath of
confidentiality and silently congratulated myself on the raise. I
was in the firm.

Ms. Duveau said she wouldn't be able to make it to
dinner after all. "But tomorrow for certain." She gave my arm a
light squeeze and made a little wink as though she was trying
to blink a pixie from her eye. Figuring out Ms. Duveau was
going to take a while.

"I'd like to see Trevor's office. His agenda could be
helpful. I might find something to suggest why he hasn't been
in."

She paused for five seconds, probably long enough for
her to consider every rational contingency, and then said, "All
right." She led me to Trevor's secretary.

"This is Mr. Sanchez. He'll be with us temporarily.
Cooperate with him. He might be able to find out what's
happened to Trevor." She started to leave, but turned
back.

"Keep everything involving Mr. Sanchez among the
three of us."

Hush-hush. Way beyond corporate confidentiality. The
young woman looked mildly excited.

While I looked around Trevor's office, she stood by to
help. She also watched me like a hawk. That was OK. Even
hawks blink.

I asked about the contents of file cabinets against a far
wall. When the watchful hawk looked toward them, I slipped a
set of keys out of Trevor's desk and into my coat pocket. I
didn't find anything else I wanted to steal, so I invited her to sit
down. "How long has Trevor been in Paris?"

"About a year and a half."

"I'd like a list of everyone you can identify that Trevor
has had contact with for that period. Names and, if possible,
phone numbers and addresses. I'd also like as much detail as
you can give me about each person."

She fidgeted before she answered. "When do you need
it?"

"Early tomorrow, but I don't need everything at once.
We could start with a few of the most recent contacts. If it
would help, you could just list names, and I'll ask you questions
about each person."

"It's a lot. Tomorrow morning could be..."

Her expression told the fate of secretaries. Do the
impossible yesterday.

"Whatever you can get together by tomorrow
afternoon is fine. Let's start with Trevor's address."

She gave it to me, and I asked her to call a taxi.

It was a little after 8:00 p.m., early February. The
taxi's tires sucked along wet streets between gauntlets of
elegant rock architecture. Paris had been built many times but
the final building had been made to last, a sprawling
objet
d'art
that functioned as a city.

Trevor's quarters were just off Rue Saint-Dominique,
not far from the Sorbonne. I turned my collar up against the
weather and walked to his door. I tested the keys I'd lifted from
his desk. One fit.

He had three floors across a relatively narrow breadth.
Dining, lounge and kitchen on floor one, master's quarters on
floor two and library and guest rooms on floor three. The
second floor had a study where I found his computer. I booted
it up to be greeted by a password request. It was a long shot,
but I rummaged through his desk and found a notebook that
contained a list of complex passwords. It was a tedious end to a
long day.

I hadn't slept well last night. An ache in my stiff
shoulders squeezed higher into my neck as I tested passwords,
checked files and found nothing to suggest where or why he'd
gone.

I commandeered a 128 GB flash drive from his desk
and began copying the contents of his hard disk. When it was
done, I started to leave, but heard scratching at the front door.
If it was Trevor, he wasn't using his key. It sounded like a
pick.

I turned out the light and listened. Footsteps indicated
two people. One went to the third floor. The other moved my
way. As the door opened slowly, my heart sped to fight or flight
mode.

No place to flee.

Ms. Duveau lost her drill-sergeant persona as I
described my break-in and the encounter with an unknown
party.

"There were two of them," I said. "I heard one go past.
The other checked my floor."

"You were in Trevor's study?"

"That's right."

"Didn't they look there?"

"One did. He wasn't expecting me."

I figured I'd said as much as was necessary, but Ms.
Duveau frowned and nodded for me to continue.

"I stood against the wall by the door. He had a
flashlight in one hand. By the time he saw me it was too
late."

"You fought?"

"Not exactly. I just stepped in front of him." I pointed to
my solar plexus. "It was quick, quiet. Took the air out of him. I
was out the door before he had recovered enough to make a
peep."

She was a long way from shaken, but I sensed a tremor
of uncertainty in a psyche that was accustomed to being in
control. She bit at her lower lip.

"Before you tell anyone else, or go to the police,
Ms. —"

"Call me Sabine. You're in the firm now."

"All right, I'm Mick. I want to go back and see if I can
learn anything about what they did there."

"I'll drive you."

"It might take me a long time to look the place over. It
might also be dangerous. Even if no one is inside, there could
be someone watching. Your face could end up in a photo album
that you don't want to be in."

"I'll wear a scarf over my head."

"I don't think it'll help."

"Whether it does or not, I do insist. For personal as
well as professional reasons, I'm extremely concerned." Sabine
stood and found her purse. "Since technically I am your
supervisor, that is, responsible for your employment, wouldn't
it be better to start with a spirit of cooperation?"

Considering my financial status, yes it would. Sabine
was a good driver. We arrived in less time than it took the taxi
last night. A quick look in the study made the rest of the search
anticlimactic. The notebook computer was missing, but nothing
else was disturbed. I did find an address book, which I slipped
into my pocket.

Sabine had gone upstairs to check other rooms. She
made a little gasp and quickly turned her back to me when I
walked in on her. She had something in her hand.

"You startled me." She looked over her shoulder.

"Sorry, I found this." I showed her the notebook. "It
might have something interesting in it."

"And I found this." A faint blush colored Sabine's
cheeks as she held out a gold bracelet. "It's mine. I had loaned it
to Trevor to decipher this." She pointed to Arabic script
engraved on it. "He was studying the language, and..." Her
cheeks darkened further. "You not only startled me, I guess it
looked like I was stealing."

"Not if it's yours."

"Of course."

We continued searching and discovered nothing but a
stack of laundry and a collection of rare vinyl
records—thirty-threes, forty-fives and even seventy-eights of Josephine Baker,
Bessie Smith, Earl Fatha Hines and people I'd never heard of. If
for no other reason, I wanted to find Trevor and sip a fine
vintage while we listened to musical history together. Should
be nice.

By the time Sabine and I got back to the Winchell office,
his secretary had located Trevor's elder brother, who hadn't
heard from him in five or six months. She also had a list of
twelve people with whom Trevor had been in frequent
contact.

Sabine and I compared them with the names in his
address book. There were two matches. One was a woman
whom Joelle identified as Trevor's romantic interest. The other
was Diego Cervantes. Trevor had his name underlined.

Sabine said a Cervantes had sat in on the initial
briefings as a member of the Orimulsion client team, but he
wasn't part of the follow-up. The phone number was to a hotel.
Cervantes had checked out five days ago.

The firm had photographs of the initial client team, five
men including Cervantes. He was good-looking. I guessed
five-feet-ten and a hundred fifty or sixty pounds. A man that size
could be either thin and flaccid or lean and dangerous.
Cervantes didn't look flaccid.

After we checked the photos, Sabine asked to look at
the data I'd copied from Trevor's computer. We found a folder
whose files were garbled, either trashed or encrypted.

"I want to make two copies of this. I'll keep one and
give one to our systems administrator. This office has an
encryption standard, which is probably what Trevor used. If he
did, the administrator can help us." Sabine reconfirmed our
dinner engagement and went back to work.

I checked with Petroleos de Venezuela to find out what
Diego Cervantes' job was. He didn't show up in the company's
management structure. Maybe he'd changed employers. I
called Jorge Gavizon, an investigator in Caracas I had worked
with while I was at Global Risk Management. His fees would eat
up my twenty percent premium. I needed to talk to Sabine
about an expense account, but in the meantime, I hired him on
my tab.

I went through a list of Trevor's recent contacts
without finding much of interest, until I got to Gordon Mumby.
His name had also been in the notebook. The number was to an
investment bank in London. I called and asked for Mumby by
name.

He thought I was a potential customer. He was glib and
friendly, until I asked about Trevor. When I did, he stammered
and suddenly realized that he had more clients than he could
handle. He offered to refer me to another banker.

"I'm not looking for a banker. I'm looking for Trevor
Jones."

"Can't help you there, sorry. Good-bye." At least he lost
the stammer.

I called Trevor's brother to see if I could learn anything
that Joelle hadn't. He lived in Swindon, a nondescript,
middle-class town in the southwest of England. I asked him if he knew
Mumby.

He didn't.

Did he know anyone at all close to Trevor?

Yes he did. Three more names. Three dead ends.

I was on my fifth cup of coffee, when Sabine called. "I'm
famished."

"Me too and frustrated." My list of things to do was
down to zero.

"Do you like oysters?"

"Yep, fried, Rockefeller, boiled or po-boy."

"I won't try to follow what you just said, but let's go
eat."

We went to a restaurant that specialized in
fruites
de mer
. The menu had two or three dozen types and grades
of oysters and a variety of mussels, crabs and shrimp. We sat at
a circular bar inlaid with a tile mosaic. It was early in the
evening and the only other patron at the bar was a
middle-aged woman with faded blond hair and a frumpy suit.

Sabine ordered a mix of shellfish presented on a
mound of ice that was as wide as the length of my forearm. She
identified the types of oysters for me and tried to explain why
some cost twice as much as others. A portly Frenchman with a
dapper air and a kindly smile sat down next to her and joined
her tutorial. When he found out I spoke Spanish, a bit of
Japanese and a smattering of other languages that did not
include French, he frowned and shook his head.

"No French?" He said it without disdain or
disappointment. He simply looked puzzled that someone
would consciously deny himself one of life's great joys. He
extended one finger at a time. "
Liberté
,
égalité
,
fraternité
." If nothing
else, he clearly wanted me to remember the country's motto in
its own language.

Those attributes became increasingly abundant at our
little round bar. I entered a conversation in Spanish with a
couple who sat next to the portly gentleman, and in tortured
Japanese with a Taiwanese couple. Salute the world's language
teachers.

Sabine nudged my arm. "Would you like coffee?"

"Yes."

"I have a flat near here."

Her flat was large enough for a couple, two kids, a dog
and a maid. Despite the lack of population, it had a textured
warmth of wood and cotton and a sensual elegance of down
and silk. Soon the aroma of coffee enhanced the effect.

"Let me guess, black?" She set a silver tray in front of
me.

"How'd you know?"

"I know my coffee drinkers. Besides you're a
middle-aged American male. I played the odds. So what do you think
about your new position?"

I chuckled.

"What's funny?"

"I'm an undercover business consultant. It's a bit like
infiltrating the Boy Scouts."

"
Management
consultant."

"Excuse me."

"
Business
consultants advise their clients on
what kind of secret sauce to use, so consumers will eat more of
their products."

Five, four, three...

I started a little mental countdown, ready to launch a
smile when the punch line arrived, but Sabine looked as stern
as an executioner. She took herself and her job seriously.

...two, one.

"Management consultants advise corporations on
how to eat the competition. You're an undercover
management
consultant."

There it was, but I didn't smile. I wasn't sure "Sabine
the Stern" would like it. For an instant, I thought I was getting
closer to figuring her out. I wasn't. Dimples deepened in her
cheeks, and the corners of her mouth slid up a tad. She licked
her lips, probably to cool them off. Her eyes smoldered.

Coffee could wait. Sabine couldn't.

To touch her was as surprising as anything else about
her. She was an intellectual, surely into her mid-forties, but she
had a musculature under youthfully pliant skin that would
have drawn envy from most eighteen-year-olds. Her passion
flowed from caress to tease to attack. Each mood had its own
poetic humor or driving emotion—from Whitman to Nash to
Ferlinghetti. Mostly Ferlinghetti, who won fame for a poem
about a streetwise Dog looking for an answer to things that
were bigger or smaller than himself. Fitting for Sabine, with
her painting of a squalid window in her opulent office, her
books of gauchos and McGrew, her exquisite intellect and
physique. Her lust without pretension. I'd met her only
yesterday and this evening realized that physically I'd never
wanted a woman more.