Presumption of Guilt (24 page)

She reached out to interlace her fingers with his. “I'll not only grant you that,” she told him, “I'll trust you to figure it out. And along those lines, you'll be happy to hear that Joe's asked me to meet with Linda Lucas. She gave him permission for a limited search of Johnny's stuff at home, to help in locating him.”

“Limited, how?”

She smiled and glanced at the documents spread before them. “She gets to stand by and choose what we see and what we don't. It occurred to me that I might be able to lean on the tiller a little, now and then, based on what we already got—it'll help us later, when we're explaining how we learned what we know.”

He smiled and kissed her. “Attagirl.”

 

PART TWO

 

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Tina Panik slipped her hands into the pockets of her tailored slacks and stared out at the waters of Great South Bay. Her fifty-foot motor yacht, temporarily attached to the seawall beyond the Olympic-sized swimming pool, bobbed gently up and down, reminiscent of a cradle rocking its occupant to sleep. It was a manicured scene of lazy luxury, as offhand, casual, and lacking in subtlety as a peach pit diamond worn by a weekend gardener in designer jeans—not atypical of the Hamptons.

Sleep, however, wasn't something Tina had enjoyed much recently, not since that first completely off-the-wall phone call from Vermont.

“BB” the man had called himself, sounding like a car mechanic and copping a 'tude to boot. Lucky Tina hadn't been the one answering the phone, or she would've told the guy to fuck off. But it had been made to the New York City office Tina's father had once called the HQ, as if he were Douglas Goddamned MacArthur, which—in his own mind—he probably had been.

It was recorded, of course, as Tina had made sure they all were nowadays, so she received the benefit of BB's outrage by proxy. That had been the start of it all.

Now, Christ only knew where and how it was going to end.

She sighed and turned at the quiet knock on the all-white living room's open doorway. “What now?” she asked.

An older man stood on the threshold—slightly built, cheaply dressed, with a small potbelly and a thin, white comb-over. In this glaringly bright, modernist setting, he looked almost comically out of place. Walter, one of her father's antique retinue, and someone she hadn't seen in years before this mess. He had brought the phone call to her attention, because—as he'd explained—she was the boss now, and the boss needed to know what was goin' on. Sometimes the old ways had value. If he hadn't acted on instinct, God only knows where this might have led.

“Sorry to bother you, Miss Panik,” he said, bobbing his head respectfully. “But Johnny Lucas has disappeared. The cops pulled in his wife for questioning.”

“She going to know anything?” Tina asked.

Walter shrugged tentatively, as if fearful Tina would lash out at him. The small gesture made her reflect once more on how her father must have handled his subordinates. She'd never seen any of that, being the boss's cloistered daughter. But she'd always imagined Jack Panik to have been a hard man. Her mother down to the entry-level kitchen help had all certainly behaved as if he were someone to displease at high risk.

“I don't know what he told her about himself,” Walter said. “Or if she even knows about the old days. They met after he moved up there. He was never supposed to tell nobody, but you don't know about people.”

“You know, though, don't you, Walter?” Tina asked. “Isn't that what you said?”

“Yes, ma'am. When we were starting out for your father, Pauli was like a little brother. That was his name back then.”

She held up her hand. “I don't need details. I just need to know what's going to happen next—based on your knowledge.”

Walter looked awkward, and spread out his hands feebly. “It's kinda up in the air.”

Tina pursed her lips and motioned to one of the two ten-foot Roche Bobois sofas bracketing a large coffee table in the middle of the enormous room. “Sit down, Walter. Make yourself comfortable. Would you like a drink?”

Walter perched on the edge of the couch, as comfortable as a cat on a highway. “No, Miss Panik. I'm fine, thanks.”

Tina chose an armchair, sitting back and crossing her legs. “Worst-case scenario,” she proposed. “If Johnny Lucas—let's just call him that—gets caught by the police, how much crap can come back to hit us?”

Walter appeared slightly pained by her harsh language, looking down at the white wool rug before answering. “It could hurt. He's not all the way out, like most of the old-timers, but he ain't in, either, like me. That makes him kind of a bridge, connecting the past with nowadays—but out in the world, if you get me.”

“I get you. And not that it matters, but how many others like him are there, drifting around like bad smells?”

Walter grimaced. “Good one. Right. I guess only a couple by now—guys we had to make invisible 'cause of the hot water they got in, but too loyal to make disappear. Pauli—Johnny—was a good boy. A stand-up guy. Wasn't nuthin' he wouldn't do for Jack Panik. We were like Army Rangers back then—hot to trot and tough as hell.”

Again, Tina held up a hand. “Stay on track, Walter.”

“Sorry, miss. Anyhow, a few of us got carried away, and when your father decided to change the operation slightly, and distance ourselves from the bad old days, we had to figure out what to do with 'em—the ones that weren't dead or in jail already. This was when you were still in school—long time ago.”

Tina's gaze drifted over to the cold fireplace. Despite keeping the past at arm's length, she wasn't such an idiot as to have been ignorant of its existence. The Kennedys had cut their teeth running booze across the border, and John D. Rockefeller's father was a snake oil salesman, after all. On a lesser scale, Jack Panik had merely copied from such ruthless examples of American enterprise—and then concluded his career with an equally adept display of soothing public relations. Tina had only continued the trend, posing as a venture capitalist and entrepreneur, while in fact generating most of her income through insider trading, fraudulent stock deals, and an assortment of white-collar schemes. Nevertheless, she'd known little of her father's earlier machinations.

She took a breath and asked Walter, “I know I told you to handle this when it started, and not to involve me directly. But I need to know if it's getting messy. For example, when this BB character called and started screaming about … whoever it was.”

“Hank Mitchell,” Walter said softly.

“He said we weren't supposed to have killed him. What did he mean by that? Who was Mitchell?”

“A nobody, miss. Just somebody in the way.”

“In the way of what?”

Walter shifted in his seat, getting slightly more comfortable without actually sitting back. “Your father was changing the old ways, like I said. Pau … Johnny was in a jam; Jack needed to clean the money he was taking in. At the time, it seemed like a no-brainer. Give Johnny a new identity and have him set up a money-laundering operation, someplace in the boondocks.”

“Vermont,” Tina filled in.

“Right. Jack already had others like it, around New York. This wasn't such a leap. And Johnny, who was a go-getter, said that part of Vermont was ripe just then 'cause of a major construction project—a nuclear power plant. He said there had to be a bunch of businesses who'd be good for washing money. And he was right.”

“So our cash went through a nuke plant?” Tina asked skeptically.

“No. A roofing business. That was Johnny's point. The plant was tapping labor and resources like nobody's business. Which meant that outfits around the edges were looking for capital to take advantage. It was real smart.”

Tina carefully scratched her forehead with one perfect fingernail. “Right. So Johnny Lucas got into bed with BB … What's his last name?”

“Barrett.”

“BB Barrett. Okay. Where's Hank fit in?”

“He was BB's right-hand man,” Walter explained. “But not as broad-minded as BB.”

Tina tilted her head back to look at the ceiling. “Jesus Christ. So Johnny reverted to old habits and took care of the problem.”

“Which was fine,” Walter followed up, “till Hank's body was discovered in concrete a couple of weeks ago. That's what got BB fired up—he'd been told by Johnny that Hank had just conveniently dumped his family and taken off to ‘find himself,' or something.”

Tina stared at him. “Concrete? Really?”

Walter lifted one shoulder haplessly, as if apologizing. “I know, right? Still, it worked. The deal was done, Johnny moved into the number two spot after a while—so nothing would look too suspicious—and everybody was off to the races. Johnny had a new life, and your dad another way to launder cash.”

Tina studied his hopeful expression glumly. When she spoke, her voice was hard. “I put you in charge. This is our third meeting, Walter. The first time, you broke the news and gave me the bare bones about Barrett—which, by the way, was a real CliffsNotes version of what you said just now. The second time, you told me Barrett had been found dead, and made it sound like our problems were over. But if I got it right this time, you're telling me that Johnny Lucas whacked BB Barrett à la Al Capone, and has now taken off, with every hayseed cop who knows how to tie his shoes hot on his trail. Am I getting this right?”

“Except for the whacking part, yeah,” was the mumbled reply.

“What?” she asked loudly.

“Except for the whacking part,” he repeated. “Johnny didn't kill Barrett.”

“Why not? That's his style.”

“Maybe, miss. But BB was killed before Johnny could get to him.”

Walter stopped abruptly, realizing what he'd just let slip.

It was too late. Tina slid forward in her seat. “Walter,” she said slowly, her tone menacing, making him think of her father—dead these many years. “Did I in any way, shape, or form
ever
tell you to have BB Barrett killed?”

“No, ma'am.”

“Then why, unless it was under your direction, was Johnny even contemplating ‘getting to him'—to quote you exactly?”

Walter sat with his hands between his knees, wondering how he'd ended up in such a mess, so many years after he thought he'd left this life behind him.

“Use your words, Walter,” Tina coaxed him, her voice suspiciously gentle.

“I told him to take care of it,” Walter said quietly.

“And—given Johnny's background—how did you think he'd interpret that?”

Walter looked at her sadly. “They used to be friends, BB and him. I didn't mean what you think.”

She matched his emotion, not one to bemoan spilled milk. “It's not what I would have thought that matters, though, is it?”

“No, ma'am. I messed up.”

She stood up, prompting him to clumsily do the same. She took his elbow and steered him toward the door. “I messed up, too. You've been a loyal friend for a long time—to my father, and to me. I should have given you more direction. I didn't give it enough attention.”

They paused on the threshold and she placed her hand on his shoulder. “I will now. Use whatever resources to do what you need to do. Go where you need to go. Clean this up.” She leaned forward slightly, so their eyes were inches apart. “I mean it, Walter. Do you understand? Make it go away. No muss, no fuss, and no interest by the police. This mosquito must disappear.”

Walter nodded once. “It will, Miss Panik. I promise.”

*   *   *

Walter crossed the peastone drive to where he'd parked under a tree near the courtyard's gate. Tina Panik's house was only about ten years old, but built to look like some downscale appendage to Versailles. Back at the office downtown, rumor had it that the ambition had been to rip off Marie Antoinette's pseudo farmhouse, where she'd pretended to be a happy peasant shortly before they'd lopped off her head.

It was a dangerous comparison, as Walter was well placed to know. He'd witnessed Jack Panik's ascendancy, and was therefore appreciative of the daughter's inherited ruthlessness. She had become a poster child of respectability lately—complete with this mansion in the Hamptons and a season's pass at the New York City Ballet—but she was no dingbat queen, soft and suffering from self-delusion. Born to the business, she was a chip off the old block, and Walter could attest to the fate of those who'd sold her short in the past.

And now, he'd just lied to her face.

He got into his car and aimed it out into the street, but only to drive a quarter mile before pulling over to consider his options.

He was in a pickle. In the vernacular of politicians, he hadn't been entirely forthcoming with the facts, which meant that if he stumbled from here on, and Tina caught wind of it, all his decades of currying favor, keeping his head down, and building a fat nest egg would be for naught. Tina Panik didn't have screwups killed—that dated back to her father. But Walter had seen her reduce people's prospects to the level of an unskilled migrant worker.

He rolled down the window and killed the engine, letting the salty breeze drift in from the beach, one block over.

When that call came in from BB Barrett, demanding to know why he'd been lied to about Hank Mitchell's fate, Walter hadn't hesitated to contact his pal Pauli—or Johnny, as he'd been known a lot longer.

That had been a mistake. Lucas had heard about the body at the nuke plant, but he'd had no idea about BB's reaction. He hadn't thought about BB Barrett in years. Walter's phone call had come like an electric jolt and—sadly, only in retrospect—set a screw loose in the man, apparently.

Walter stared straight ahead sourly. Damn. After that, it had been like a snowball rolling downhill, getting bigger and bigger. Barrett turned up dead, Lucas denied having anything to do with it, and Walter—despite what he'd just told his irate boss—didn't believe a word of it. As a result, now worried and scrambling—Walter had sent a team north to set up cameras at Lucas's place and tap his phone. And here was the icing on the cake: Those cameras had now captured some mysterious intruders creeping around and stealing stuff.