The Forgotten (36 page)

He looked up in time to see the sun reflecting off something in an upstairs room of the main house. He immediately walked in the opposite direction, took cover behind a tree, and knelt down, ostensibly to look for weeds to pull or mulch to tidy up.

From the partial cover provided by the tree canopy he looked up, shielding the sun’s glare with one of his huge hands. He counted windows. Third floor, second window from the left. Southwestern side of the house.

He squinted to see if he could tell who was holding the optics. But he couldn’t make out the person.

He ran a sightline from the window to what the person was looking at.

It was a simple process and yielded a simple answer.

The yacht.

With decent optics and from that height the person could probably make out quite a few details on the boat. Which also meant the person was well ahead of Mecho when it came to recon.

He saw Beatriz come out again.

Mecho moved swiftly enough to intersect her path. He walked along with her for a few paces. He asked the question that he needed answered.

She didn’t seem to want to, perhaps thinking he was casing the place for a later burglary. But finally she did tell him.

Mecho thanked her and said that he would try to help her.

“How?” she immediately asked him.

“I can get you out, perhaps.”

“You cannot do that,” she replied, her face turning as pale as her almond skin would allow. “My family.”

“I know,” he said. “It’s complicated.”

“It is not complicated,” she whispered back. “Do not do anything to help me. I am beyond help.”

She turned and rushed off.

Mecho looked around to see if this conversation had engaged the interest of anyone, security types or otherwise.

He could see no one paying them any attention.

They were merely servants conversing. Perhaps it was expected.

Class to class.

It was only when you tried to mingle outside your class—steerage passengers emerging on the main decks during daylight hours—that people became upset.

But she had told him what he needed to know.

The room with the optics belonged to Christine Murdoch.

She was the one spying on Lampert and his yacht.

And Mecho wondered why that was so.

P
ETER
L
AMPERT SAT BACK
in the leather chair that was located in his private office on
Lady Lucky
. He was surrounded by only the best here. The best boat, the best equipment, the best crew, the best wine, the best views, and the best ass money could buy.

It had been a long slog for him, though. South Beach was a rough place to survive, much less build a successful business. Lampert had tried the legitimate side for a long time. But ultimately he found it too stifling with all its rules and regulations and laws that could trip you up. He did not like regulatory agencies looking over his shoulder. He didn’t know of one businessman who did.

After his hedge fund had imploded he had decided to build a different business model. Thus he had taken his talents to another line of work. He had installed proven business systems in a field that often existed on crude violence and sketchy accounting.

Now he had built an incredibly profitable empire by charging fees tied to profitability, like royalties on a book. He charged a standard fee up front to find and transport product to the end user. If the product hit certain benchmarks once deployed in the field, additional monies started to flow back to him.

If a prostitute reaped over six figures then monies started to come back to him. If a drug mule successfully completed ten missions, monies started to flow back to him. The lowest-level product, the common laborer, typically had a more modest threshold to meet because their initial cost was the least. But the profits generated by them added up because there were so many of them deployed in the field. Volume was volume.

Slave labor in civilized countries was one of the fastest-growing segments of the criminal world. Not that he ever saw anything remotely criminal about it. To Lampert he was doing these poor folks a favor. As slaves they were fed and housed and lived a decent life, despite the fact that they were not free.

He had often had these people taken from worlds where there was never enough to eat, never a roof over their heads, and where wages were something one dreamt about but never actually received.

Freedom was vastly overrated in his mind.

He had accountants placed in strategic areas with full access to the books of his business associates. These associates, often not the most cooperative of men, had fallen in line with his demands solely because he had made the business far more lucrative and stable than it ever had been before. And he guaranteed a steady stream of product across all service lines. That was the most critical factor in his business and it demanded constant foraging for bodies in some of the most remote places on earth. There was no margin of error in this segment of the business.

As a result a boat that was late with product was a boat that would not be sitting above the water much longer, along with its captain and crew.

He looked out the starboard window and checked his watch. Then he glanced back at the computer screen over which a stream of business data poured over secure networks.

He played hard, but he also worked hard. It was not easy building what he had. Most people would not have the nerve or stomach for it. He had been born with a silver spoon in his mouth on the shores of Lake Michigan. His father had been CEO of a Fortune 500 company. His mother was a beautiful socialite who entertained often and lavishly at their multiple homes. They had lived the life that most Americans dreamed of.

He had gone to the most elite universities and set up shop on Wall Street along with a gaggle of his classmates. Many were now titans of industry and preferred to keep the money and influence that came with it in tightly controlled circles of people who were just like them. Upward mobility was nice to talk about to the
masses, but not something that people at his level ever really took seriously. The pie was only so big. Why share it with folks who did not share your values?

Your vision for the future?

Your fraternity affiliation?

What most people didn’t understand was that it was the risk-takers who made America great. It was said that the rich had captured nearly all the wealth and all of the income generated over the last decade or so. Well, Lampert thought, they should. It was right and just. The only thing wrong with income inequality was that it wasn’t unequal enough.

The 99.9 percenters were sheep and stuck right where they should be. They were the players to be named later. There were billions and billions of them and they looked exactly the same. The 0.1 percenters deserved everything because they were the elites. They were special. They moved the world to new heights.

And it didn’t deter Lampert in the least that he was acting on the wrong side of the law. People wanted whores and drugs and slave laborers. Thus there was a need.

He was simply fulfilling that need. Nothing more, nothing less. Like cigarette manufacturers, porn sites, fast food outlets, and casinos fed people’s desires and addictions. That simple model had driven business success for all of recorded history.

Find a need and fill it as hard as you can.

Ten minutes later he checked his watch again and looked out the window. It was growing dark. That was good.

An hour later he heard the
thump-thump
.

He rose and looked out the window. The lights of the chopper were drawing closer, coming in from the Gulf where a boat larger than the one Lampert was on lay at anchor.

A few minutes later he felt the wheels of the bird come to rest on the helipad at the aft of the yacht. The chopper powered down and he could envision but not hear over the sounds of the engine the doors of the aircraft opening and then thunking closed.

He sat back down in his chair, put his fingers together, and waited, counting off the seconds in his head.

The door to his office opened and the person came in, escorted by a member of Lampert’s security team.

With a curt nod Lampert dismissed the guard, who closed the door behind him.

The visitor was around five-eight and strongly built, with a head that was too large by half for even his muscular frame.

There was a lot contained in that overly big head, Lampert knew.

The man was dressed all in black. His shoes had blocky heels to push his height up as much as possible.

It was enlightening, thought Lampert, that a man that powerful still felt compelled to artificially inflate his stature.

He nodded at Lampert and sat down across from him.

“Good trip?” asked Lampert.

The man flicked a cigarette from his shirt pocket and lit up without asking whether it was permitted or not.

Lampert would not have questioned the man’s decision to smoke on his floating palace.

Peter Lampert did not fear many people.

The man sitting across from him was one whom he did fear.

“A trip that ends safely at one’s destination is, de facto, a good trip,” said the other man in an accent that showed that English was not his primary language.

“Things are going well,” said Lampert.

“Things could be better,” said the man as he exhaled smoke and watched it float toward the elaborately carved ceiling.

“Things could always be better,” replied Lampert, leaning forward a bit in his chair.

The other man tapped his cigarette ash against the arm of his chair, letting it fall to the carpet.

Lampert did not object or even react to this.

“Things could be better,” said the man again. “For example, there have been a number of killings in Paradise. The police are investigating. Your car was bombed. Again, the police are investigating.” He stopped talking and stared across the width of the desk.

Lampert’s expression didn’t change. “Steps had to be taken. The fallout is what it is. The investigations will lead nowhere.” He
might be afraid of the man, but he could not show that fear. And Lampert could debate a point with the best of them.

“
Your
opinion that the investigation will not go anywhere,” said the man, studying him closely as he bent the fired match between his two fingers.

“My
educated
opinion based on conditions on the ground.”

“And if you’re wrong?”

“I don’t believe that I am.”

“But if you are?”

“There will be consequences.”

“Of course there will be. For
you
.”

“Then I have every incentive to make sure I’m right.”

The man eased a bit to the left, making the leather seat squeak. “Moving on. It’s getting more difficult to acquire product. The price has to go up. You’ll send this down the line.”

“How much?”

“Ten percent for now. As a base. Add five percent for each category above base.”

“Meaning a twenty percent increase for the top tier?”

“Yes.”

“That’s steep.”

“It could be more. But I’m a reasonable man.”

“I’ll have to eat some of that.”

The man looked around at the luxurious interior of the yacht. “I think you’ll be just fine.”

“I’m sure I will.”

“So long as your educated opinion turns out to be right. Money isn’t everything.”

Lampert smiled. “I would disagree with you there. Money
is
everything, because it leads to everything else of value.”

“Would you like to visit my boat? I have a new submarine. It can hold over thirty people. The marine life here is quite fascinating.”

“I would like to, but demands here will prevent me.”

Lampert was thinking,
I don’t actually want to become part of the marine life.

The man rose. “Someone who blows up Bentleys and disappears
like a wisp of smoke is someone who is formidable. It was a message.”

“Yes, it was. Perhaps more directly than you know.”

“And you have the answer?”

“Working on it as we speak.”

“A small measure of advice?”

Lampert looked up at him expectantly. “I’d love to hear it.”

“Smoke often evidences a large fire that can burn out of control.” He paused and put out his cigarette on the surface of Lampert’s forty-thousand-dollar custom-built desk. “So work faster.”

The next moment he was gone.

Like a wisp of smoke blown out to sea.