Measure of Darkness (9 page)

Our first-time guest Milton Bean, gingerly forking slices mouthward, continues to look pleasantly, not to say orgasmically, dumbfounded. Orgasmic in the foodie sense, of course. Dumbfounded in the oh-my-God-never-have-I-tasted-anything-as-divine-as-this sense. Not that he's forgotten the price that must be paid for his presence at this table, and which Naomi is now poised to extract.

“I see you're enjoying our little meal,” she observes.
“Take my word, it only gets better. Mrs. Beasley's homemade ice cream with ginger sauce has been known to make fully grown humans weep with pleasure.”

“I, um, can't wait,” he says. Shrinking a little, aware what comes next.

Boss lady favors our guest with one of her cool, controlling smiles. “Mr. Bean, you have done exemplary work for us in the past, as a freelance operative, and given what you have been able to accomplish with so little muss and fuss, I certainly want the relationship to continue. However, we need to be assured that your particular talents will not put us in legal jeopardy. Your sponsor, Mr. Delancey, would have us believe you somehow melt through security by way of human camouflage. Or by borrowing Harry Potter's cloak of invisibility. Jack has read all the Potter books, by the way, because at heart he's deeply romantic. Whereas I saw part of one movie and found it tedious, undoubtedly because I don't believe in magic, and don't want to, not even a little bit. To the contrary I believe in data, in facts on the ground and in the scientific method. Which made me wonder how you do it, how you manage to evade security wherever you happen to be assigned, even on very short notice. There being no satisfactory explanation, I have concluded that you are not, in fact, evading security.”

Milton flinches, ever so slightly.

“It seems very likely that you have in your possession valid identification that allows unfettered access to a variety of venues,” she continues, not simply a statement but a pronouncement of fact. “The possibilities are actually quite limited. You could be with the state police, FBI or IRS, any of which could get you through security in most places, but none of those agencies have you on any database we can find. So by a process of elimination, if
you are not a card-carrying member of a government law enforcement agency, you must be affiliated with one of the major auditing firms. How am I doing, Mr. Bean?”

The Invisible Man couldn't be more stunned if boss lady had firmly tapped him on the temple with a large rubber mallet. “How did you figure that out?” he finally manages to ask.

Naomi allows herself a small sniff of satisfaction. “Sheer surmise. No other explanation suffices. Publicly traded corporations are required to submit to unscheduled spot checks from auditing firms. That's especially true of any company with Department of Defense contracts. Ergo.”

“Ergo?”

“Therefore, hence, it follows,” she says, defining the word with a thin, prim smile. “Fret not, Mr. Bean, your secret is safe with us, just as our secrets will be safe with you.”

Naomi doesn't need to add any threatening qualifiers, like “on pain of death” or “on pain of never again being invited to share Mrs. Beasley's cooking.” The Invisible Man, with a dip of his head, surrenders to her powers of deduction. Far from the first, unlikely to be the last.

“You got me,” he says, with a sigh that could be relief.

“Details, please.”

“Three years ago I was a forensic CPA with—” and he names one of the major national auditing firms, here redacted. “Your basic Mr. Bland with a calculator, making sure it all added up. That was my life. Checking the numbers, following the money. It was a career I chose, because it fit me. Milton Bean, CPA. Then in the course of my work I stumbled on this, um, let's call it an elaborate scheme to divert revenue from one financial entity to another, and then another, round the world, for the pur
poses of avoiding taxes and as well as cheating the shareholders. I'd call it a musical-chairs variation on a Ponzi scheme, but virtually undetectable unless you happened to get lucky, which I did. In more ways than one. Much to my surprise, and very much to my boss's surprise, I ended up as a whistle-blower, of a sort.”

“Meaning you didn't blow it very loud.”

Milton Bean smiles, betraying, for the first time in our presence, a slight glow of personal pride. “As whistle-blowers go, I was very discreet. A tiny little tweet, you might say. There were several large financial corporations involved—of the too-big-to-fail variety—as well as long-standing complicity from my own firm at the very highest levels. Also, the likely failure of several highly leveraged institutions, and many innocent victims, if I testified. So we all came to a reasonable accommodation. The corporations agreed to make good on the taxes they had been avoiding, plus pay very substantial fines, and I received a generous cash settlement and also got to keep my job, with all the usual benefits. Except I draw no salary and never have to show up for work.”

“You liked being undercover,” Naomi says, nodding to herself. “Blowing that very discreet whistle.”

He grins. “It's way more fun than being an accountant.”

At a certain angle, in a certain light, he really does bear the smallest possible resemblance to Brad Pitt, if Brad Pitt was a certified public accountant with a receding hairline and forgettable eyes.

“All my life people tended not to notice me, and I pretended not to be bothered by not being noticed. Milton Milquetoast, the man who blends into the background.
Now I get to use that personal camouflage to my advantage. Playing to my strength, you might say.”

“I do say,” Naomi says, impressed. “Bravo, sir! Well told! Now that your special talent has been sorted—the details of which will not leave this room, rest assured—please report on your visit to QuantaGate.”

According to Milton, the employees of the small research and development firm are in a deep state of shock and disbelief, stunned by the sudden death of their legendary founder. Not that anyone on the staff pretends actually to have known Professor Keener other than in passing. According to office chatter, Keener was formally polite but remained very much aloof, spending most of his time in his personal lab. More than one QG employee described him as “impossible to know.”

“It's as if they all labored in the shadows of his genius, attempting to develop functional equivalents of his theoretical constructs. Which I gather has something to do with a new form of communication between high-speed computers,” Milton adds.

“Functional equivalents? Theoretical constructs?” Naomi asks, probing. “Did they use those terms, exactly?”

He nods. “More than once. Understand, as an auditor I was not permitted access to the secure labs and workshops. My movements were restricted to the general office area and the cafeteria. The support staff.”

“Who restricted your movements?”

“Security.”

“Wackenhut or Gama Guards?” Naomi asks, naming two of the biggest private security providers.

“Gama Guards,” Milton says. “Your basic corporate rent-a-cops, in uniform. Cordial but firm—mere accountants are not allowed into the labs. That requires another
level of clearance, plus fingerprint and iris recognition. There's not that many lab employees—less than thirty, according to the payroll—so presumably they all know each other. No way I could have gotten back there unobserved.”

“Understood. Jack, do you have any contacts with Gama Guards?”

“One or two. Cops who went private.”

“Be nice to check out the lab, or at the very least chat with someone who works in the secure area.”

“I'll make some calls,” Jack says, making a note of it.

“Okay,” Naomi says. “This is all good. We're making progress of a sort.” She turns to our guest. “I'm sure you're eagerly awaiting the dessert course, Mr. Bean. That will follow my brief summation, and it is our habit to enjoy the final course in silence, understood?”

He licks his lips and nods. “Perfectly,” he says, posture attentive.

“First, let me state the obvious,” says Naomi, forming a steeple with her elegant fingers. “Two missing persons are the object of our collective concern, three if you count the mother, whose identity and location remain unknown to us. Our primary focus will be upon finding and recovering Joey, the so-called ‘keyboard kid,' but it is beginning to look as if we'll have to find Randall Shane first, before we can develop a productive line of inquiry on the child. As to possible motives for Professor Keener's murder, indications are that he was suspected of espionage. That the mother of the missing boy might be a Chinese national could be crucial. Bear in mind that the Chinese government, working with various Chinese universities not unlike our own MIT, has launched hundreds of cyber attacks in the U.S., including one that triggered a blackout in a major Florida power
grid. These assaults are intended to steal our military and industrial secrets, probe our defenses and evaluate how to shut us down if we ever became involved in an active, forces-on-the-ground war with China. Therefore a great deal of emphasis has recently been put on developing new ways to communicate—methods that cannot be compromised or hacked—and we know that Professor Keener has been involved in developing just such a system. That much is public knowledge, and mentioned prominently in the prospectus for QuantaGate.

“Which brings us to the question of who. Who ordered Professor Keener's execution? Keener may have been killed by someone on our side—it could even be that Randall Shane is guilty—or at the behest of a foreign power, to ensure his silence. Or it may have been personal, or somehow tong related, or both. We are not yet able to rule out any of these possibilities, but I'm confident we'll do so over the next few days.”

Jack then does the unthinkable. Something remarkable, in fact. Rather vehemently, he interrupts Naomi in the middle of her summation to argue a point. “No way did Shane do it.”

Naomi gives him a cool look. “We won't argue the point at this time,” she says. “Unlike you, I'm keeping an open mind on the subject.”

Jack opens his mouth to reply, thinks better of it and makes a sign that boss lady should continue.

“Okay,” she says. “As to who seized the suspect—and he does remain a suspect, however much we all may want him to be proved innocent—possible candidates include Central Intelligence Agency, National Security Agency and Defense Intelligence Agency, all of which have assumed extraordinary powers under the Patriot Act. It's rare that a U.S. citizen be detained under the
Patriot Act, but it does happen—and quite possibly more frequently than we know, since the secret court orders are sealed.

“We should bear in mind that there are sixteen named U.S. intelligence agencies, and an unknown number that operate beyond public scrutiny. Plus agencies from any number of foreign governments. Any might be culpable. Or none. A grim reminder that we are in murky, dangerous waters. To my regret, I cannot guarantee the personal safety of anyone associated with our enterprise. Given the obvious danger, if any of you want to resign from this particular case, you have only to ask. No opprobrium attached.”

I break the resultant silence—and the tension—by cracking wise. “Opprobrium?” I say. “Is that a fancy perfume?”

Boss lady ignores me. “Are we all in agreement? We do our best to locate and recover the missing child. If in agreement, please say so. Jack?”

“Yes, agreed.”

“Dane?”

“Against my better judgment, yes.”

“Teddy?”

“Way yes.”

“Mr. Bean?”

“Honored to be included. Yes.”

Saving me for last. “Alice?”

“Where you go, I go. Hell, yes.”

“Good. Settled. And now for the dessert course.”

In communal silence we savor Beasley's homemade vanilla ice cream with ginger sauce. Hot and cold, sweet and tangy, all in one bite. Imagine the best ice cream you
ever had as a child, on an occasion when taste was exalted and joy was pure. Say your tenth birthday.

This is way, way better.

T
hree steps from the dining room, with the pleasant buzz of ginger still humming in his mouth, Jack Delancey reaches for the cell phone vibrating in his right trouser pocket. An incoming call from Glenn Tolliver, of the Massachusetts State Police. Funny, he was just thinking that the perfect finish to the meal might be a leisurely stroll along Comm Ave while puffing on a short La Gloria. Maybe if Piggy is in town, the better option would be Cigar Masters, with a nice port or cognac.

Jack flips open the phone, effectively wrecking his plans.

“One question,” Tolliver says brusquely, sirens in the background. “Did you happen to drop by Jonny Bing's boat today? Or his ship or yacht or whatever it is?”

“I did.”

“Good answer. Get down here.”

“The marina? What happened?”

“That's what you're going to explain. Pronto, if not sooner.”

“Twenty minutes.”

Some idiot tipped over a box truck on the Southeast Expressway, scattering a few tons of watermelons, so
it's more like forty minutes before Jack eases his boaty Lincoln Town Car into the Quincy Bay Marina visitor's parking lot. Hard to find a space, what with all the fire trucks and patrol cars. The last flush of late June twilight lingers, so all the flashing lights make for a festive sunset. If he didn't know better he'd think a traveling carnival had set up along the waterfront, complete with glittering arcs of spray from the fireboats out in the harbor.

The object of all this attention is the
Lady Luck
. To all outward appearances Bing's massive yacht is unharmed, but Jack has a pretty good idea this is about more than a false alarm. He finds Glenn Tolliver in uniform, confabbing with plainclothes detectives, state and local. Tolliver catches sight of him and dismisses his troops.

“Hey,” says Jack, trying to sound casual. Captain Tolliver in full regalia is an imposing sight. “What's with the bag?”

“Never mind my uniform. I want to know everything you know.”

“That'll take a lifetime.”

“Can the wiseass.”

“Fine. No problem. Is Bing alive or dead?”

“I'm asking the questions. Over there,” he says, jutting his massive chin at a white canvas crime scene tent that's been staked into the asphalt a few feet from the dock system.

Jack follows him to the tent and sits, as indicated, in one of several folding chairs situated near a portable table equipped with a couple of big coffee urns. Tolliver grabs himself a cup, doesn't bother offering. Not that Jack, spoiled by the good stuff, has any interest in gray, parboiled caffeine.

Tolliver takes a seat, heaves a sigh. “What a mess,”
he says. “I was speaking at a graduation ceremony. Supposed to.”

“Your daughter.”

“My daughter, yeah. Made it through eighth grade. With honors, actually. My ex was there, of course. And I get the call ten minutes before I'm due at the microphone, prepared to drone on about how the future has yet to be made, and how they'll be making it. Her generation.”

“I thought she was in, like, first grade.”

“She was, seven years ago. Time flies, Jack. They say life is like a roll of toilet paper—the closer you get to the end, the faster it rolls.”

“That's a lovely image, Glenn. What happened to Bing?”

The big trooper's smile is thin enough to have been cut with a scalpel. “You first. Your visit with Jonny Bing. Word for word, or as close as you can get.”

“No problem,” says Jack, and begins his recitation.

Fifteen minutes later, Tolliver heaves another sigh. “That's it?”

“My best recollection.”

“Ace interrogator like you, there's still no clear indication as to who might have killed Professor Keener, or why? Assuming, for the sake of argument, it wasn't your pal Shane.”

“It wasn't, and no. Bing seems genuinely puzzled. Convincing on the subject of how the sudden death of his partner might wreck the company and ruin his investment. If he's lying, he's damn good at it. Which he might be, for all I know.”

Tolliver studies the back of his meaty hand. “Maybe.”

“My gut says the only thing he was holding back concerns Keener's missing kid.”

“Holding back what?”

Jack shrugs. “Claimed he never heard of Keener having a child, in or out of wedlock. But he knows something. I'm going to have another go at him.”

“No,” Tolliver says. “You're not.”

“I'm not?”

“Not unless you can commune with the dead.”

The news doesn't exactly shock Jack, given the general mood, not to mention the overwhelming response from law enforcement. “Well, that sucks,” he says, lightly drumming his well-manicured fingers on the tabletop. “How'd it go down?”

“You know I can't share details of an ongoing investigation.”

“Walk me through it, maybe something will pop. Something he said that I couldn't recall at first. I'll share.”

Tolliver favors him with a sour look. “You neglected to tell me something, in your exhaustive recollection of the interview?”

“I'm just saying.”

The big man considers. “Walk with me,” he says.

 

Lady Luck
has had a bath, mostly seawater from the fireboats. Jack can smell the tang of salt, and under that a lingering odor of gasoline and smoke, and something worse than smoke. He's not keen about getting the drips on his shoes—fine leather doesn't like salt—but knows better than to complain as Tolliver stomps through the slop in his highly polished knee-high dress boots, heading along a companionway. They haven't bothered with crime scene tape because the entire yacht is a crime scene.

As the big state cop leads the way, he says, “Surveillance cameras show you boarding this tub at 10:20 a.m.,
exiting by the same route at 11:10 a.m. Sound about right?”

“Yup.”

“Silly question, but was Bing alive when you left him?”

“Not a silly question, and yes, he was. Alive and more or less relaxed. Certainly unaware that something bad was about to happen.”

“No security on board, you said. Or staff.”

“Yeah, and I thought that was a little odd. But then Jonny Bing is—I mean
was
—more than a little odd. Wealthy enough to be eccentric, I guess. He apologized for the lack of fawning servants—his words—and said the crew had a few days off because the boat would soon be leaving for Bermuda. So, far as I could tell, he was alone. But then he could have had a dozen blondes stashed in his master bedroom, for all I know.”

Tolliver glances back. “Or a dozen disco boys.”

Jack hazards a raised eyebrow. “Is that the word on Bing?”

“Word is Jonny wasn't particular as to gender. But you got the blond part right, apparently. And it was only one. Maybe he was cutting down.”

“So it was a lover's tiff?”

“Nah,” Tolliver says, gesturing for Jack to step ahead of him. “Go through that door or hatch or whatever they call it, then turn left.”

“Door, I think,” says Jack, lifting his cuffs as he steps into about an inch of standing water flecked with suds of chemical foam.

Unlike Jack and Tolliver, the on-site crime team members are wearing white rubber boots and white disposable overalls. They have digital cameras set up on tripods, laser measuring devices, a chemical sniffer, all the toys.
The objects of forensic interest lie on a partially melted bed—a giant round mattress, like something out of an old Hugh Hefner fantasy—set up on a hardwood pedestal. Behind the thronelike bed, the curving wall is mirrored. Narrow, vertical mirrors joined together like some giant diamond. More like cubic zirconia. Because to Jack the whole setup looks cheesy, very unlike the elegant salon where Bing had made him welcome, or the rest of the luxuriously appointed yacht. Maybe the sleaze of the playboy bedroom made it appealing, a retro thing. Different strokes.

Jonny Bing, still recognizable even in sudden, violent death, lies on his side among the pink satin sheets. Pink from the blood that was washed away before it had time to soak in. In the strobe flash of the cameras, the glittery wetness makes him seem almost alive. Almost. Bing's left eye looks wrong.

“Shot to the head took him down,” Tolliver explains. “We think small caliber because there's no apparent exit wound. Same with the shot to the heart—no exit. So, a classic double tap. Same deal with the boyfriend, except he got it in the forehead instead of the eye. Small entry wound, no apparent exit. Bullet bounces around, it's like an instant Cuisinart for the brain.” The trooper gives Jack a look, almost friendly, like the old days when they were professional colleagues of a sort. “Tell that to Naomi Nantz the next time she dices up sweetmeats, what a bullet does when it rattles around inside a skull.”

“She'll appreciate that,” Jack says, smiling but not feeling it. Feeling instead the slosh of contaminated water soaking into his Italian leather shoes.

“The precision of this, both vics hit exactly the same way, makes me favor the lone gunman theory.”

“Looks that way,” Jack agrees.

The second victim, assumed to be the sexual partner because, like Bing, he's naked, tangled in satin sheets, is a Caucasian youth with shoulder-length bleached-blond hair. In life the victim had been lithe and athletic, at least a foot taller than his partner. On the floor a few yards from the giant bed is the real puzzle. Lying on its side like a partially charred log is the fully clothed body of an Asian male. Thirtysomething, is Jack's guess, but he could be off ten years in either direction, on account of the fire damage, or whatever made the man's flesh start to slough off.

“You'll notice the human barbecue has a gun in its hand.” The big trooper crouches, pointing. “See the fingers? They look broken to me. We'll know for sure after the autopsy, but the M.E., who hates getting his feet wet just like you, he concurs: fingers busted. Like somebody put the gun in his hand, had to force it.”

“Made this guy fire the weapon?”

Tolliver stands up, snorts. “Are you serious? A double, double tap? No extra shots fired? Whoever did this is a genuine marksman, a skilled assassin. Not some frozen corpse with a busted hand.”

Jack's eyes are watering from the smell. “Frozen? What are you talking about?”

“This guy here. He's charred on the outside, frozen underneath. M.E. tried for a liver temp, said it was like bumping up against a stone. Pretty neat trick, eh? We're calling him Baked Alaska.”

Jack takes a step back, letting his eyes drift over the scene, putting it all together. “Okay. Bing and his buddy are shot in bed. The shooter then drags in a frozen corpse, plants the gun, douses the place with gasoline? That's your theory of the crime? The assassin was creating a particular scenario, or attempting to?”

Tolliver nods approvingly. “Pretty quick for a retired dude. Yeah, and I'll bet my next pulled-pork sandwich that Mr. Baked Alaska will turn out to be connected to one of the local Asian gangs.”

“So it's supposed to look like a gang hit that went wrong somehow?”

“Yeah. Might have worked, too, but the genius who set this up didn't know about the fire suppression system on board. He got ignition but no liftoff.”

“Surveillance?”

“No cameras in the bedroom, which is a surprise. Wouldn't have surprised me if that little horn-dog Jonny Bing wanted to keep mementos of his conquests, but apparently not. There is a pretty elaborate surveillance system in place elsewhere, covering the hallways, engine room, bridge, decks and so on. The bad boy who did this was smart enough to figure that out, and yanked the hard drive. I'm assuming he got to the surveillance DVR after he killed the victims, but before he attempted to torch the place. So he had a plan. Messed up with the fire part, but he got away undetected. Which is a genuine mystery. And you know how I hate mysteries.”

Jack frowns. “Wait. You clocked me on the marina surveillance but not the shooter?”

“Not so far. We're assuming the shooter approached from the water, using the ship as a screen from the marina surveillance cameras, which cover the floating dock system, but obviously can't see through the ship. We're checking any and all surveillance systems all along the bay, from Boston Harbor to Hull, but that will take a while.”

Jack has had enough of the smell. He carefully wades out to the companionway, trying to keep his trouser cuffs dry, and failing. “This sucks,” he mutters.

“What's the big deal?” Tolliver responds impatiently. “Take your fancy threads to the dry cleaner. Bill it as an expense.”

“No, it's not that,” Jack says. “I'm just thinking, if I hadn't dropped in on Jonny Bing, he'd probably still be alive.”

The big trooper shrugs. “Maybe. Or maybe he was already scheduled for demolition.”

“Yeah.”

“I'd be curious to know what your boss thinks.”

“Me, too,” says Jack.