Madman's Thirst (27 page)

CHAPTER 31 – TUNNEL

“I hate to say it, Jake,” Mack
said when they finished, “but this is a brilliant idea.”

“Yes,” Scarne agreed. “Too bad it got
Elizabeth Pearsall killed.”

“Are you sure?”

“In my gut. One of the kids
working the story for Bob found out about the old tunnel projects. He was
thinking about doing a whimsical story about them. He even told Bimm, who said
it was news to him.”

“He lied. Both the track and Home
Port were covers for modern tunnels.”

“And if I’m right, the real
tragedy is that the reporter didn’t know what he really had. Pearsall wasn’t
interested, but Bimm didn’t know that. He would have assumed that the reporter
was just being cagey and that Bob was behind the inquiry. Bimm was afraid that
he would eventually find out something he shouldn’t.”   

They heard a slap and a yelp and
then Bobo Sambuca walked in the room.

“Some kind of neighborhood
security patrol car just stopped outside. Our police guys shooed him away, but
they say we’d better wrap this up soon.”

“Won’t be much longer,” Scarne
said. “What did you just do to Herbie?”

“Just a little practice,” Bobo
said and went out.

Another slap and yelp and then all
was quiet. 

“OK, Jake. But what? People can get
killed when billions are on the table. But why in this case? Would the tunnels
be that bad for Staten Island? I can think of a lot of reasons why they might
do some good. And most of those reasons have exhaust pipes.”

Scarne tilted his chair back and
put his hands behind his head, thinking.

“I don’t know. But we do know that
Bimm is fronting for someone. He doesn’t have the resources to pull this off. Who
does?”

“Nobody on Staten Island. Maybe some
big Wall Street honcho, or a foreign government. It would be interesting to
find out who owns the land on the Brooklyn and New Jersey sides.”

“Whoever it is,” Scarne said. “They
don’t want their involvement known. Might be criminal. Might be something
else.”

“It would eventually come out,
Jake. Somebody might notice the big fucking holes.”

 “Once they got all their ducks in
order they might be willing to go public. Maybe they hadn’t finished paying off
all the right politicians.”

“I love it when you get cynical.
Now what?”

“We’ve got nothing. All this legal
gobbledygook won’t hold up in court. We can’t even tie Bimm to Lacuna with this
stuff. And with Sallie Mae and Banaszak dead all we have are some phone records
that a first-year law student could explain away.”

“We could give what we’ve got to the
cops. Condon may be able to shake something loose.”

 “And Bimm will lawyer up. And the
people behind him probably can senator up. And then we’d have to give up the
priest or go to jail. No cops.”

Dudley Mack shook his head.

“You know, you amaze me. I keep
forgetting that I’m supposed to be the crook. You’re saying we have to squeeze
Bimm ourselves. Get him to roll.”

“Yes.”

“Works for me. You’d better let me
do it. You’re too dainty.”

There was another yelp from
Lemming.

“Better than a doorbell,” Mack
said as Bobo walked in to the room.

“Fuzz are antsy,” Bobo said.
“They’re talking about their pensions.”

“OK, we’re done,” Mack said,
reaching into his pocket for a flash drive, which he inserted in one of the
computer’s UBS slots. “Let me copy all this.”

“You must have seen that in a
movie,” Scarne said.

While Mack was downloading, he
wandered around the room looking for anything incriminating. Perhaps Bimm had a
hidden safe full of numbered bank accounts in Switzerland. He wondered if Herb
the Perv had safecracking on his resume. He squinted behind a huge painting of
a Bengal Tiger. Nothing. He started heading toward some other Holiday Inn art
work on a far wall when he passed a bureau covered with photo frames. Bimm
apparently wasn’t a family man. But he was definitely a narcissist. All the
photos featured the fat real estate lawyer at business meetings.

Scarne was about to move on when a
familiar photo caught his eye. It was a shot of a luncheon or dinner table at
some civic function. Beldon Popp was sitting between Donald Trump and Aristotle
Arachne, who both had the same dyspeptic looks on their faces. It was the picture
Scarne had seen in Popp’s office at the
Register
. He realized that the
one at the newspaper had been cropped and blown up. This one showed everyone at
the table – including Nathan Bimm. Scarne glanced at an inscription in the
lower right-hand corner. The photo was taken two years earlier at the New York
Hilton.

Arachne had told Scarne that he
didn’t know Bimm. Of course, the photo didn’t necessarily make him a liar.
Arachne probably attended scores of functions a year. He might not have
remembered Bimm, even though the man was hard to miss in his white suit, which
made him look, especially in a photo, like the Pillsbury Dough Boy. And that
didn’t mean Ari would recall his name. But something nagged at the back of
Scarne’s brain. Then it hit him.

“Bobo! Bring Herbie in here.
Alive.”

Scarne went over to the computer.

“What’s up,” Mack said. “I was
just about to close it down.”

“I got a bad feeling about
something.”

Bobo came in with Lemming.

“Herb,” Scarne said, pointing to
the screen. “Open up that folder.”

“A.A. Meetings? The guy’s a lush?”
Lemming said, disapprovingly. “Can’t trust a boozer.”

Scarne and Mack traded
pot-calling-the-kettle-black looks.

“Just open it,” Scarne said.

The security lock gave even Lemming
some trouble.

“This one’s a bitch,” he said.

“How long?” Scarne said.

“Five minutes, maybe ten.”

“Bobo, go tell Abel we need more
time.”

Sambuca went out. Seven minutes
later Lemming broke into the folder and opened one of the files.

“The son of a bitch,” Mack said
after reading a few lines. Then he pulled Lemming out of the chair. “Herbie,
you did good. I may let you sit in the front seat on the way back to the
halfway house. But for now, go back in the living room and don’t make a mess.”

The files in the folder had
nothing to do with Alcoholics Anonymous. They were all related to Bimm’s
business dealings with Aristotle Arachne.

“It’s his tunnels, his money, his
plan, everything,” Scarne said. “He was behind it all along. Care to bet who
owns that Brooklyn and New Jersey land?”

“Bimm could have orchestrated
Elizabeth’s murder on his own,” Mack pointed out, “without Arachne knowing
about it.”

“But probably not Lacuna’s or
Banaszak’s,” Scarne said. “Arachne lied to me about knowing Bimm. And he set me
up at Pocono Downs. We can’t prove it, but we know it all. And so does Bimm.
When is he due back?”

“Day after tomorrow.”

“Can you snatch him?”

“I’ll use tranquilizer harpoons.”

When they got out to the street
Scullen said, “What did you find out?’

“He’s got a terrific porn
collection and a lousy decorator,” Scarne said. “Nothing you can use.”

“Then what took you so long. Did
you grill some fucking steaks and watch skin flicks?”

“Sorry. Bimm’s a lawyer. It took
time to go through his files. It was like reading hieroglyphics. I’m about to
go blind without the porn.”

Later, as they were leaving the
precinct, Scarne said, “I felt bad about that. Think they bought it?’

“Probably,” Mack said. “Cops are
used to being lied to. You can make it up to them later. Throw some credit
their way. Now, I’ll handle Bimm. What are you going to do?”

“Confront Arachne.”

“Where?”

“His place.”

“You’re gonna just waltz in?”

“I have the secret code.”

“I’m not sure what that means, but
it might be better if we had Bimm first.”

Scarne thought about it.

“You’re right. Give me the flash
drive. I’ll put Evelyn to work on putting something together for me when I pop
in on Arachne. Let me know when you have Bimm.”

“Make sure you see Arachne with
more than a flash drive in your hand.”

Scarne looked at his friend.

“What?” Mack said. “You think
you’re the only one who can come up with lines from
The Godfather
?”

CHAPTER 32 – FISH FOOD

 “The website said this was one of
their newer resorts,” Sobok said. The cab had just pulled up to the front
entrance of the Paradise Island Beach Resort  after passing what appeared to be
a huge industrial complex alive with dump trucks kicking up dust. The air had a
decidedly non-tropical smell. “Might have even said newest.” The entrance
looked tired and worn. Even given the short shelf life of tropical properties,
this one looked at least a decade old.

“Company bought the property a few
months ago,” the cab driver said. He was a grizzled black man wearing a watch
cap. “Means they can say it’s one of their newer properties. Not lying, but not
exactly the truth.” He saw the look of resignation on Sobok’s face. “But it
ain’t bad. Right on the ocean. Maybe even closer, what with the storm coming.”
Bahamian humor. Violet, a late November Tropical Storm churning in the Atlantic
was threatening to ruin the weekend plans of thousands of tourists. I’ll be
long gone by the time it gets here, Sobok thought, after really ruining
someone’s vacation.

“What was that big facility we
just passed?”

“Laundry for the Atlantis resort. Behind
it is a sewage treatment plant.”

Wonderful, Sobok thought. Then he
decided to enjoy himself. He’d stayed in much worse accommodations earlier in
his career. Even the ride in the ancient puddle-jumper prop plane from Fort
Lauderdale to Nassau had been nostalgic. It had been a long time since he had
watched a mechanic pour oil out of a quart can into an exhaust-scarred engine
just before takeoff. It reminded him of some flights in Africa years earlier
when he assumed, given the propensity of African aircraft to fall out of the
sky, he was probably in just as much danger as his intended targets at the
time.

After paying the driver and
politely refusing his offer to be a tour guide for his stay, Sobok walked into
the lobby, which had all the ambiance of a Salvation Army consignment shop,
right down to the decrepit furniture. There were three women sitting behind the
reception counter. Two didn’t even bother to look up, but the youngest of the
three stood and smiled pleasantly.

“Can I help you?”

Sobok figured she was new and
still bright eyed and bushy tailed. He gave her his reservation number and
credit card for “incidentals,” which included a $50 “energy fee.”

“What time do you schedule your
electrocutions,” he asked.

“Sir?”

Apparently Bahamian humor went
only so far. Sobok was given a faded “VI” card which allowed him to charge things
to his room; he assumed the “P” had rubbed off. The nice young girl gave him a
small map of the property and circled his apartment. He walked out a side door
past a small pool where several squealing children were hurtling down plastic
slides. He entered a breezeway. On his left was a small sundries shop and on
the right what appeared to be a café. Several people in bathing suits were
sitting in the breezeway, either having coffee or working on laptops. A woman
on one of the computers saw him looking at her.

“Wireless,” she said. “This is the
only hotspot in the whole place. Or you can use the computers off the lobby for
$5 an hour.”

Sobok’s apartment, on the second
floor of a building just past the main pool and Tiki bar, was about as
expected. Two bedrooms, platform kitchen with attached dining alcove, living
room with a TV on a counter (the battery compartment in the remote was taped
closed) and a small terrace overlooking the pool and Tiki hut. Nice view of the
ocean about 75 yards away. Everything looked clean, in a dirty sort of way.
Cracked tile, old paint, no shampoo or other amenities in the bathrooms except
some bars of generic looking soap.

There was no TV in the master
bedroom, although one was listed on the sheet near the refrigerator that
catalogued the apartment’s contents. Sobok went into the smaller of the two
bedrooms. He spotted something on the far wall by the window. He walked over.
It was either a brown vine or the strangest looking mold he’d ever seen. About
three feet long, it snaked down from the top corner of the window. The last few
inches were powdery. Maybe it was dying. It reminded Sobok of one of the
tentacles coming out of the pod in
Invasion of the Body Snatchers
. He
decided to sleep in the other bedroom. Sobok threw his bag on one of the twin
beds in the bedroom furthest from the alien-looking vine changed into a bathing
suit and golf shirt, and headed to the beach. 

The choppy surf was feeling the
effects of Violet, even though the storm was hundreds of miles away. But there
was only a slight breeze and Sobok enjoyed his quick swim. Then he walked back
to the hotel pool where just about every lounge chair was occupied. Sobok
dropped his towel and shirt on a chair and dove into the pool. He was surprised
by the chill. He swam over to the Tiki bar and sat on one of the concrete
stools that allowed patrons to sit in the water and have a drink. He ordered a
Planters Punch from the woman tending the hut . The Tiki hut was octagonal and
small clear plastic bags half filled with water hung from the ceiling on the
outside. When his drink came, he asked the server about the bags.

“Keeps the flies away.” More
Bahamian humor? She saw the look on his face. “They reflect the sunlight.” She
sounded bored. He wasn’t the first one to ask. “Flies see their reflection much
bigger and it scares them away.”

“You’re joking.”

“See any flies?”

Sobok was about to reply that
maybe the flies were avoiding her Planter’s Punch, which was terrible. Too
sweet, with an undercurrent of coconut that didn’t belong. But he didn’t want
to push his luck. Place wasn’t all that bad. Usually he stayed at the
world-famous Dune Club when on Paradise Island, but this was going to be a
quick job and his rundown hotel was within walking distance of the Atlantis,
the huge resort and casino complex where Nathan Bimm was staying.

***

One of the singular attractions in
the Atlantis resort complex was its famous 2.7 million-gallon saltwater Ruins
Lagoon, a huge open-air aquarium home to 20,000 reef and pelagic fish, and other
marine life. The “Ruins” referred to the fake artifacts and crumbling buildings
strewn throughout the bottom of the lagoon, which were supposed to represent
the lost city for which the resort was named.

The Great Hall of Waters in the
hotel’s Royal Tower offered a faux sea-level view of the aquarium and its
denizens to diners in its café. Protected by a two-story high wall of glass,
they could eat their seafood while 12-foot hammerheads and six-foot barracudas
glided by, some of whom would have been delighted to return the compliment.

The café was sparsely occupied at
8 A.M., which gave Doris and Michael Fassbinder and their three children the
chance to grab the table nearest the aquarium glass.

“Wow! Look at that!”

Patrick was only five, young
enough to still be impressed by the Volkswagen-sized sea turtle that cruised by
with seemingly little effort from its massive flippers. The boy had his face
planted against the glass, having barely touched his pancakes since they’d
arrived. His parents were glad the waitress had suggested the pancakes. The
breakfast buffet would have been wasted on him. They could always slip him some
eggs, sausages and French toast from their mounds of food.

“The glass makes it look bigger
than it is, Trickster,” Lisa said. She and her twin sister, Kate, both 12, had
also skipped the hot buffet and were picking at their yogurt and fruit plates.
Conscious of their bodies even now, they were on a health kick. They had both
looked at their father’s heaping plate with disdain. They were always on his
case about cholesterol, fish oil and whole grains. They were right, of course,
Fassbinder knew. But what the hell? This is a vacation getaway. He looked out
at one of the Delphic columns in the aquarium. Some poor schlep in the real
Atlantis was probably eating a healthy meal when the ancient volcano exploded.
What good did it do him?

“I don’t think it magnifies them
all that much,” his wife said. The  aquarium back home in Norwalk, CT, had
concave glass that made a striped bass look like a dirigible. “That’s pretty
close to life size.”

“Oh, wow! Look at that. Come
here!”

The two girls rolled their eyes at
each other but they went to join their little brother. A late addition to the
Fassbinder clan, he was their pet. Their parents smiled at each other and, with
no disapproving almost-teenage eyes looking at them, dug into their sinful
breakfast.

“What is that?” It was Kate.
“Someone swimming in there? Isn’t it dangerous? Hey guys, you should check this
out.”

Michael Fassbinder was spearing a
sausage from his wife’s plate.

“Probably one of the staff,” he
said to no one in particular. “They know what they’re doing. The fish are well
fed. It’s perfectly safe.”

“Speaking of well fed,” his wife
said, “go easy on the sausage.”

“I think it’s a manatee,”  Lisa
said. “One of the sharks is eating it.”

“I didn’t think they had manatees
in the lagoon,” his wife said.

“Gross,” Kate said.

Fassbinder was playfully going for
another sausage when he saw the funny look on his wife’s face.

“What is that,” she said, starting
to rise.

He followed her to the glass to
see what the kids were looking at. Patrick had started to cry. He was always
sensitive.

“Don’t look, Trickster,” Kate said
protectively as the boy dug his face into her hip.

There was a huge hammerhead shark
slamming into something that was not quite manatee-sized but pretty damn big.
Too white for a manatee, Fassbinder thought. A couple of barracuda were
circling the object, occasionally darting in to tear out a chunk of the animal.
Well, so much for being well-fed. Law of the jungle and all that, but this is
probably something the kids shouldn’t watch. There was a dark cloud beginning
to surround the poor creature, which was being nudged closer to the glass.
Other, smaller fish, jacks, drums and snappers, which normally swam by in
platoons at a leisurely, disciplined pace, were now darting about haphazardly
in a panicked frenzy.

“OK, everyone, back to the table,”
Fassbinder said. “Show’s over. It’s time to .…”

He didn’t finish the sentence as
his wife and daughters started screaming simultaneously. A busboy walking past
said, “holy shit,” and dropped a tray loaded with dirty dishes and glasses,
adding to the clamor.

Fassbinder stood transfixed as the
body of a huge naked man bumped up against the glass, minus an arm, which the
hammerhead was shaking back and forth like a terrier with a bone.

 Nathan Bimm’s eyes were agape and
his fat, blubbery lifeless lips kissed the glass. As the shocked father hurried
his family away, alarms began sounding throughout the hotel.