The Trust (33 page)

“What’s my dad got to do with this?”

“You want to know what happened to him, right?”

“A boom hit him in the head.” Claire looked back and forth at the two guests. “It was an accident, right?”

“We’re not sure,” the agent replied.

The color drained from Claire’s face. She was struggling with the revelations. “Are you saying Father Ricardo killed my father?”

“I’m saying he’s no priest. His organization was using the Palmetto Foundation to launder money.”

“But why hurt my dad?”

“I think your father started to resist. He discovered the scheme. Or he changed his mind.” Torres regretted her words at once.

Their implication crushed the air from Claire’s lungs. She shook her head no, felt her heart pounding, her eyes moistening. “You think my dad was doing something illegal?”

“We hope not.” The agent pulled back and reclined in her chair. She felt no sympathy for Claire. But there were smarter ways than outright accusation to make people talk. “Ricardo is part of a ruthless organization, where people get what they want. Or eliminate the roadblocks. There’s no telling what pressure they brought to bear on your father.”

The tears flowed steadily now. Claire tried to envision what her father would say under these circumstances. She had watched him take control of meetings so many times before. “Do I need a lawyer?”

“I don’t know,” said Torres truthfully. “But right now, we need help finding your father’s wife and Grove O’Rourke.”

Claire dried her eyes with a tissue. “Yes, of course.”

“Did your father confide in his attorney?”

“Huitt Young was his best friend.”

“You think Mr. Young will answer our questions?”

“He will if I ask him. But I don’t see how any of this helps us get JoJo or Grove back.”

“We’re looking for some lead, some clue, some detail or association, anything to help us find them.”

“Anything,” consented Claire, wrought with emotion, not sure what to say. She needed the FBI’s help. She knew it, no matter how unsettling her decision had been to ignore the kidnapper’s threat: “the woman dies.”

Agent Torres gunned questions over the next fifty minutes or so. No detail was too small. Her interest in Palmer Kincaid bordered on the obsessive:

“When did your father graduate from Harvard?”

“Who are his business associates?”

“Did he have enemies?”

Claire grew tired of the agent’s interrogation, the incessant search for details. Torres began every other sentence with “why” or “how” or “who” or “what” or “where” or “when.” Under the benumbing barrage, Claire stopped brushing aside her bangs. Elbows on table, head between hands, she let her hair hang in a long waterfall over her face. She was spent.

There are pains worse than fatigue. Shattered trust is one of them. The mind games are devastating. Especially when the trust was in a parent, whose stature reached epic proportions inside a close-knit community where name and reputation are everything.

Claire had decided that enough was enough. That she needed coffee.That this interrogation was a shit waste of time. It was then that Torres turned to Palmer’s second marriage. And the agent’s revelations left Claire with one flattening thought:

I don’t know my own father.

*   *   *

Around 10:50
A.M.
, Claire signaled for a break.

Jill placed a tray with coffee, cream, and sugar on a small serving table inside the conference room. She decided Claire looked haggard—drawn face, bags under her eyes, hair on walkabout. “Need anything else?”

“Any word from Grove or Father Ricardo?”

“Not a word. Grove hasn’t called his office. And Annie wants to speak with you.”

“Why’d you call her?” Claire had never spoken with Annie. But she knew the name all too well. Annie was the difference between Grove being a friend and Grove being a prospect.

“I didn’t. She answered his home number.” Jill added sheepishly, “And my call upset her.”

“What happened?”

“The two of them spoke last night. And she said something about him promising ‘not to do anything stupid.’”

Torres, who had been pouring coffee, snapped to attention at Jill’s words. “I need O’Rourke’s home phone number pronto.”

“I’ll make that call, captain.” Biscuit stood to leave.

“No you won’t. It’s an FBI matter.”

“Don’t tell me what to do,” the big man argued, surprising himself. “The poor woman is probably sick out of her head. I’ll get what you need.”

“Do you know Annie?” asked Claire.

“No. But it’s time we met.” Biscuit exited the conference room with the receptionist.

Torres stirred two sugars into her coffee, no cream. When the agent returned to her seat, she considered the antique chair for a moment and decided to change places. She grabbed her pad and pen, circled the table, and landed in the seat next to Palmer Kincaid’s bedraggled daughter.

A rich, almost syrupy aroma wafted through the room. The agent sipped her coffee, savoring the bittersweet taste. She waited for the heat to work through her hands, her torso, for the sugar and caffeine to fill her tanks, for the momentary pause to make Claire Kincaid uncomfortable. Torres leaned forward, in close, the better to drill down deep. She was ready. Because every second counted.

“How did your father meet Mrs. Kincaid?”

“Through one of his Harvard buddies.”

“Does the friend—”

“Gordie,” Claire interrupted.

“Does Gordie live in Charleston?”

“No, San Diego.”

“How’s that make sense?” Torres made a big show of looking confused.

“I don’t understand.”

“Charleston,” the agent said, left palm facing up. “San Diego,” she followed, her right hand raised in confusion. “Where did Mrs. Kincaid live before she met your father?” Torres already knew the answer.

“JoJo worked for Gordie in San Diego.”

“So that’s where your father met her?” The agent was exacting to a fault.

“What difference does it make?”

“We never know,” said Torres, “what puts some lowlife behind bars. But it’s always there, the fact, the association, the shred of evidence that seems insignificant at first.”

“Gordie could have introduced them in Charleston or San Diego. My dad and his college roommates got together all the time.”

For a moment Claire’s face brightened at the memory of her father and his Harvard cronies, the way they told the same old stories, year in, year out. It was sweet. They were like vinyl records, scratched and dinged through the decades, always skipping at the same refrains or belting out the same punch lines together.

“What do you know about Mrs. Kincaid’s previous marriage?”

“What are you talking about?”

Biscuit returned to the conference room. Torres glanced at him, one of those faces that say, “I owe you one, buddy.”

“No luck,” the big man announced, and sat down. “I’ll try Annie in another hour.”

Torres resumed the examination. “Your stepmother was married to a sailor once. Biscuit found out surfing the Web.”

Claire’s eyes widened. Her jaw hung slack. “Which yacht club?”

“U.S. Navy.”

“You’re kidding,” she almost scoffed.

“Chief Petty Officer James Berenson. Divorced from Mrs. Kincaid three years prior to her marriage to your father. Now serving in the Middle East.”

“You’re wrong.”

Biscuit cocked his head. So did Torres. The force of Claire’s words dazed them both for a moment.

“Say what?” The agent could not believe her ears.

“You heard me.”

“Why am I wrong?”

“JoJo and my father got married in the Catholic Church.”

“Not everyone tells their priest,” argued Torres.

“My father isn’t everyone.”

“What priests don’t know won’t hurt them.”

“No way JoJo was married before.” Claire shook her head and folded her arms. She was adamant, 100 percent certain.

Torres said nothing. But her head was cocked, her face curious. Her lips curled up to the right and slid down to the left in a thin, colorless line. And her chin was perched between thumb and forefinger. She was the picture of skepticism.

Claire read the signs. “Have you seen the photos of my father at the Vatican?”

“They’re everywhere. How could I miss them?”

“Yeah, why do you think my dad was at the Vatican?”

“Every Catholic wants to visit.”

“He went to get my marriage annulled.”

“Irrelevant,” the agent argued. “That has nothing to do with Mrs. Kincaid.”

“You don’t know my father.” Claire kept shaking her head. “He insisted on my annulment. Otherwise, I couldn’t get remarried and still take communion.”

“Why the fuss over a cracker?” Almost at once, Biscuit realized it was an unfortunate comment. The two women grimaced as though he were the lord of all pagans. “Sorry.”

“If my father had married a divorcée,” persisted Claire, “he would have told the Church. You can take that to the bank.”

“If your father’s friend knew about JoJo’s first marriage, he’d say something, right?”

“Gordie. Those two finished each other’s sentences. What’s your point?”

“It’s like this—”

Before the agent could explain, Jill buzzed through the intercom. “Father Ricardo’s on the line.”

CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

TURKS AND CAICOS
SEVENTY-FIVE MINUTES EARLIER

My world was black. Crazy, rubbish thoughts eddied through my head. It was cold, so very cold.

There were a thousand shades of blue, disparate hues from azure to turquoise swirling through the lens of a powerful microscope. The slide sucked me down the optical tubes into a vast, hungry void, an ocean of nothing spread across three inches of glass.

What happened?

I had coldcocked a club with the back of my head. Rattled it good. Now I was rolling on a ship’s deck, the sea pitching me back and forth. The waves were growing in size and shape, crashing against the hull and gaining strength.

I was swimming, washed over the gunwales by back-to-back breakers. A fierce riptide dragged me down, down, down. Everything was wet and cold, so very cold.

Air. I need air. I can’t breathe.

My head broke through the ocean’s surface. Consciousness returned but just barely. The light was overwhelming. The back of my head throbbed. I wanted to wretch. I was drenched, sitting bolt upright in a bedroom, my eyes flickering, my head a bucket of mud.

Ricardo came into focus, slowly, unsteadily. It was like viewing him through an ear canal. He had just doused me with a pitcher of water. The bedroom reminded me of the Delano in South Beach, everything white and crisp. We were somewhere in the Turks and Caicos.

Or maybe not.

“Hello, sunshine.” Ricardo smiled sadistically, his black pupils surrounded by red. They were piranha eyes, cold and ruthless.

He reared back and crashed a massive right against my cheekbone, opening the skin and bowling me off the bed. I landed on my butt, pain searing through my tailbone and up my spine. Ricardo bounded toward me and stepped on my chest, his foot holding me down.

My cobwebs vanished.

“You got lucky at the beach,” he growled, his voice low and menacing. There was a purple lump bulging from his forehead, the spot where my foot had connected.

“You look like a fucking eggplant.”

“You double-crossed me.” Ricardo leaned with all his weight, the oxygen wheezing from my lungs.

There’s one thing I know from Wall Street. The most powerful person in the room is the one who wants something the least, the one who couldn’t give a shit about the outcome. Ricardo was obsessed with his $200 million payday. I had stopped caring what happened to me. It was my only hope.

“We can talk a deal when you let JoJo go.”

“Hey, Jake,” Ricardo called, laughing, amused by my resistance. “The douche bag’s still telling us what to do.”

That’s when I understood what had happened. Standing over Ricardo at the beach, I never heard anyone sneaking up from behind. It was the pilot, who clocked the back of my head. My skull hurt like a bastard. And now, warm blood from a fresh cut was flowing down my cheek.

Jake walked into the room, his tie-dyed shirt annoying as ever. “Just get on with it. You know how anxious Moreno gets.”

“But I’m starting to enjoy myself.” Ricardo’s black clothes were gone. He was wearing jeans and a T-shirt. The heel of his sandal was pressing into my chest, deeper and deeper.

“Did we forget our meds today?” The right opening, and I’d slap his sneer into Sunday.

“Let’s get JoJo on the line.”

She’s still alive.

“Give me your phone,” Ricardo instructed the pilot.

“What for?”

“Captain America seems to have forgotten my home movie. I want him to hear JoJo alive and in concert. We’ll see who’s a hard-ass then.” Ricardo bounced on my torso, driving home the point.

“Use your own phone.”

“I lost it.”

It was now or never. I knew what was coming. I will never forget that video of JoJo. “You assholes really want to swab urinals on the Jersey Pike the rest of your lives?”

Ricardo smirked, his face quizzical.

“I mean, what are washed-out money launderers to do? Moreno won’t give you a reference. And the economy’s tough these days. After a while, any job will do. You’ll be mopping back and forth, doing the math in your head, calculating how many Jersey boys miss the bowl. Won’t be long before one of those galvanized squeeze buckets is your best friend.”

Ricardo and Jake were both gaping now.

“And every swipe of the mop, you’ll be moaning over what could have been. What it’s like to have two hundred million dollars. Why you didn’t listen to me. Because you’ll never see a fucking dime from the Palmetto Foundation if you touch JoJo again.”

“Can you believe this guy?” Ricardo shook his head and dialed South Carolina. His heel dug like a spade into my chest.

I had to do something fast. Bong’s weight was too much for me to break free. Working on the Street, you learn how to rant. Dishing out insults is both an art and a required form of self-defense. I decided to keep mine short and crisp. “You ever thought about donating your body to science?”