CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN
C armichael phoned back as they were crossing Tampa Bay. Shea had called it right, none of the operators would give any information on the flight plans of their clients.
‘We’ve lost them.’ Moira put her phone away.
‘Halliday time?’ Brendan asked.
‘Same objection as last time,’ Moira said. ‘We could always ask Ricky to hack US Immigration. They must have cleared immigration on their way out of the country.’
Shea shook his head. They had already passed their hacking allowance. So far their luck had held in terms of not being discovered, but luck has a strange habit of running out. ‘There’s one more card to play.’ He took out his phone and typed a number. He explained the problem to whomever answered, and then signed off.
‘Who was that?’ Brendan asked.
Shea put his phone away. ‘The director of the service that looks after leasing the Lear. He’s no idea who the operators are at Tampa Executive, but he’s going to check. He’s been in the air-leasing business since forever so maybe he knows someone at Tampa who can help.’
‘And if he doesn’t?’ Brendan asked.
‘Then they’ll be like the money,’ Shea said. ‘In the wind.’
‘So what do we do now?’ Brendan asked.
‘We wait,’ Shea said.
Moira was a little annoyed that her suggestion concerning Ricky had been discounted so easily. Waiting wasn’t part of the investigative techniques she had learned. Hernandez and Gardiner had stolen a march on them. If they had got a case of the jitters, then they could start globetrotting, always staying just ahead of their chasers. She wondered how quickly Shea would get fed up of wandering from Brazil to Cambodia and on to Hong Kong before Sydney and Hawaii. Always being one step behind his quarry. It was all about the momentum of the investigation and the word ‘wait’ didn’t appear in that lexicon. Waiting also meant time to dwell on stuff she’d rather not think about. She was sitting between Brendan and Shea and she was aware of both bodies touching hers. She was desperately trying to put the idea of something happening with Shea out of her mind. But even in the rear of a limo with her partner sitting beside her she could not discount the possibility of a sexual relationship with him. He was appealing to something inside her and that something could eventually lead her to cheat on Brendan. My God, what was she thinking? She’d followed Brendan to the US to find out whether they had a future and now she was tingling at the thought of sex with the first man that showed an interest in her. There was no way this was the girl that Mr and Mrs McElvaney had raised, or was it?
Brendan let his hand fall onto Moira’s knee. He was aware that the movement he had made had the connotation of ownership and might be resented as such by Moira.
Shea noticed the move by Brendan. He had intended to make every effort to keep his mind off Moira and on finding Gregory Gardiner, but it was turning out to be the opposite. He didn’t give a damn about Gardiner or Hernandez or their little scam. The investigation was now only a reason to maintain Moira in his orbit. But he couldn’t get away from the fact that Moira and Brendan were together. He wanted Moira and he wanted Brendan out of the way, but he also wanted to keep Brendan as a friend. Emotional intelligence wasn’t his strong point, but even he could recognise that these two desires were mutually exclusive.
They were moving through the southern suburbs of Tampa when Shea’s phone rang. He listened and then thanked the caller. ‘There’s bad news and good news. My air-leasing guy has found out that they flew this morning to Belize. That’s the good news. The bad news is that only one of us has a passport so we have to wait until Brendan and I get our passports from Boston before we can follow them.’
Moira already had her phone out and was calling Carmichael. ‘Jamie, stand by.’ She looked at Shea. ‘Where is it?’
Shea gave her the location of his passport and she transmitted it to Carmichael. Then she looked at Brendan.
‘Drawer in the bedside table. There’s a spare key with the concierge. I’ll give him a call.’
Moira relayed the information. ‘Courier them to Tampa immediately.’ She looked at Shea. ‘Where in Tampa?’
‘Jorge, the destination is a five-star hotel in Tampa. What’s it called?’
‘No five-star in Tampa, boss,’ Jorge said. ‘Grand Hyatt Tampa Bay is the best in town.’
‘You heard the man,’ Shea said to Moira.
‘Reception at the Grand Hyatt Tampa Bay, fast as you can.’
CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT
M aria Hernandez and Gregory Gardiner arrived in Belize after a four-hour flight from Tampa. They were whisked through customs and immigration and half an hour after leaving the airport they were shown to their room at the Radisson Fort George Hotel and Marina. Hernandez flopped onto the bed as soon as they arrived. The alarm bell that had been ringing in her head had all but disappeared, but something wasn’t quite right. Belize wasn’t going to be their ultimate destination, but it would fit in with the scenario of scam artists on the run. Everyone in the United States assumes that criminals head due south into the countries where the long arm of the law doesn’t reach. It was in the psyche since Leroy Parker and the Sundance Kid made their way to Bolivia. She wasn’t afraid of the law. That fear ended when she made sure that Miami PD decided not to bother looking for Greg. She lay back and smiled. Her career as a con artist had been aiming for the perfect con and she had managed to pull it off. The money was safe and so were they. It was time to enjoy the good life. Not bad for the grubby little girl who had been barefoot in Guadalajara. Her ultimate destination was the island of Koh Samui in Thailand, but that was several countries and identities away. For now it was Belize. She sat up when Greg brought her a glass of cold champagne.
He bent to kiss her on the lips before giving her a toast and drinking from his glass. ‘This is so damn cool. I thought that hustling people would be the biggest high, but being on the run beats the hell out of making a few phone calls and drawing up fake contract documents.’ He clinked glasses with her again before retrieving the champagne bottle from the ice bucket and refilling their glasses.
She wondered how quickly the high of being on the run would last. It wasn’t always going to be five-star hotels and bottles of Dom Perignon. You didn’t fall off the radar leaving no trace behind by being cool. There would be two-star dives in Nagpur, where the Kingfisher beer would be served lukewarm by a waiter wearing a stained white jacket. And that would be the high point of India. Greg had never even imagined a hostel in Goa. For now, he was indulging in the fantasy of being John Dillinger and she was happy for him. Imagining himself as an arch-criminal had given his love-making an added intensity that his wife would certainly never have enjoyed. They would soon learn how much of a bad boy he could really be.
Greg sipped his champagne and looked at her lying back on the bed. ‘You’re beautiful.’
She smiled. She hadn’t had to work at being beautiful when she was a young woman in Guadalajara and Tucson, but lately she needed to seek assistance in maintaining her beauty. Her magnificent breasts needed more support and there was a noticeable spread beneath them. More lines appeared on her face every year. She got a quick mental picture of her mother, a short fat peasant woman in a wide Mexican skirt to accommodate her wide Mexican ass. Of course, in her mother’s case, the eleven pregnancies didn’t help. She could see the bulge growing in the crotch of Greg’s new white cotton slacks. She had been loved by many men. Some people would say that she had been loved by too many men. She wondered how long Greg would last. He might make it through India, but he probably wouldn’t make it all the way to Koh Samui. There would be the graduation of his son and the choice of college for his daughter. His rejection of them would play on his mind. He would try to assuage it with more booze and shorter periods between her legs.
‘I love you too, baby.’ She wondered whether he could read the lie on her lips as easily as she could read it on the lips of the men who professed to love
her. What they wanted was to use her. They were interested only in the cover, none of them wanted to read the book. She finished her glass of champagne. It would be easy to give in to the bulge in Greg’s pants but not right now. ‘I’m tired.’ She turned sideways, her head pushed into the soft pillow. ‘I think I’ll sleep.’ The last thing she saw before she closed her eyes was the look of disappointment on his face.
CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE
T he evening in the Grand Hyatt was a strained affair. They had been so close to catching up with Gardiner and both he and Hernandez had slipped from their grasp. While they were languishing in Tampa, their quarry could have moved on from Belize and be anywhere in South America. Shea had booked two rooms and Moira wondered whether it had been by accident or design that the room Brendan and she shared had no double bed. She had smiled when she had entered and seen the layout. But perhaps that was simply a figment of her over-active imagination. She turned her mind to the investigation and wondered how long the chase was going to go on. Even if they found Gardiner, there was no way that they could force him to go back to the US and the bosom of his wife and family. She wondered what was going on in Shea’s mind. Brendan knew him best and his assessment was that the government had basically cut off Shea’s supply of adrenaline when they had banned him from all activities relating to the financial markets and he needed a new source. He could have gone for extreme sports but instead had somehow decided that playing at private detective was the road to go. In Moira’s opinion, that was a serious misjudgement. She had found that police work wasn’t for the faint-hearted. Aside from his three years in Devens, Shea had lived most of his adult life in a gilded palace with money coming out of his ears. He wasn’t used to rubbing shoulders with drug pushers, pimps, burglars and assorted felons. From what she had gleaned, the people he had consorted with in Devens where more like gentlemen criminals such as hackers and inside traders, that’s if any criminal could be described as a gentleman. Although, according to Shea, his group also included an Italian gang boss and a guy who blew up some government workers in some mid-western city. He was at home in the world of white-collar criminals, but she was sure that private detection in the US didn’t only deal with the Gregory Gardiners of this world.
Later, they sat on the wooden deck overlooking the ocean and watched the sun going down. If you just focused on the marguerita in front of you and the golden rays playing on the waters of the Gulf of Mexico, you could believe that all is right with the world, Moira thought. ‘Do you think that we’ll catch up with them?’ she asked.
Brendan looked across at her. In the fading sunlight her red hair looked like it had sparkles in it. ‘With twenty million dollars you can do a hell of a lot of running. It could be Belize today and Rio tomorrow and God knows where the next day.’
‘Come on, guys. They can run, but they can’t hide,’ Shea said.
‘This is no movie, Frank,’ Brendan said. ‘It’s not a remake of The Maltese Falcon with you in Bogie’s role. They don’t need to run from you. Hell, they don’t even need to run from the police. The people they really need to run from are the people that they conned. And if they’re the kind of people I think they are, they will resent being conned but won’t spend their lives worrying about being taken for a couple of hundred thousand dollars. One or two of them might be angry enough to look for Gardiner, but he disappeared at Miami International. That’s the official line from Miami PD. And I bet that Gardiner has ceased to exist. He has a new name and a new passport to match.’
‘And according to the hard hats in Hornblower Lane, a new hair colour,’ Shea added. ‘The guy who left with Hernandez was blond.’
‘Have you worked out yet what you’re going to do if, or when, we find them?’ Moira asked.
It was many years since Shea had read Don Quixote but now the old knight felt like his kindred spirit, albeit a fictional one. ‘I suppose it’ll bring closure to Jean and the family. I don’t see him going back home.’
‘The last time we saw Jean,’ Moira said. ‘I thought that she was dealing pretty well with his absence. For my money she’s already long past the shock or disbelief stage. When we met on Martha’s Vineyard I could detect some denial, bargaining and guilt. The first time we met in Boston there was some anger and I’m sure some depression. But a few days ago there were signs of acceptance and hope. Do you want to put her and her family through all that again by telling her that you found her husband and that he conned a whole lot of people and ran away with a floozy?’
‘I didn’t think of it like that,’ Shea said. ‘The guy had responsibilities. If he stopped loving his wife, he could have divorced her. That would have been the honourable thing to do. Instead, he went on living with her while he was having this second life as a hustler.’
‘So we’re chasing him because he’s dishonourable?’ Brendan said. ‘If that’s a reason to pursue someone, you could have chosen from half the men in Boston.’
‘Do I detect a distinct lack of motivation?’ Shea asked. He signalled to the waiter. ‘I think we need another round.’
‘The problem is that we don’t seem to have an objective,’ Moira said. ‘When we started out, we wanted to find out what happened to Gregory Gardiner who disappeared at Miami International. We already have a good idea what happened. For one, he didn’t disappear, at least not involuntarily; and for two, he’s still in the land of the living. We know that his former secretary was a practised hustler and that Gardiner was the central figure in a con that netted something in the region of twenty million dollars. According to both Sami and Shea, the money is about the only thing that’s completely disappeared at this point in time. We have a fair idea that Gardiner and Hernandez have fled the US for Belize and could now be anywhere in South America.’ She looked at Shea. ‘So what’s our current objective?’
‘We find Gardiner,’ Brendan said. ‘And tell him that Frank Shea thinks that he’s treated his family dishonourably. Then he‘ll tell Frank to fuck off back to the US and mind his own fucking business.’
The waiter arrived with the drinks and Shea took possession of a double Jameson on the rocks and finished it in one swallow. He handed the glass to the waiter. ‘A refill.’
‘Nobody’s happy.’ Moira tasted her marguerita.
‘I want to catch the bastard.’ Shea accepted another drink from the waiter. ‘That’s the new objective.’
Brendan waited until Moira was out of earshot. ‘What’s with the drinking, Frank? You’re way past your limit.’
‘Don’t start telling me what my limit is.’ Shea downed the whiskey and called for a refill.
‘You’re going to feel like shit in the morning.’
‘I feel like shit right now.’ Shea looked out at the Gulf. There was a warm fuzz developing in his brain. He was on the point of telling Brendan that he was falling in love with his partner, but he managed, with difficulty, to restrain himself. One more drink and he might make a fool of himself. He knew that the person he should tell was Moira. But that was a high-risk strategy as it would no doubt lead to a make-or-break scenario and he wasn’t sure he was ready for a break just yet.
‘It’s over, Frank.’ Brendan leaned across the table. ‘You’ve come a hell of a long way. A lot further than the cops and a lot further than anyone could have expected. You know what happened and you know why.’
‘It’s not enough.’ Shea’s speech was slurred. ‘I’ve got to confront him.’
‘Why?’
‘I don’t know, I’ve just got to.’ Shea tried to drink his whiskey but spilled some from his mouth.
Brendan could see that Shea was close to passing out. He needed to get him to his room while he could still walk. This wasn’t the Frank Shea that he had known for more than twe
nty years. That Frank Shea would never get himself into this state. Shea’s eyes were closing when Brendan picked him up. He put his right arm under Shea’s left arm and marched him to the door of the bar. The waiter ran after him with the bill. Brendan quickly signed the bill and put his room number at the bottom. He half-dragged, half-carried Shea to the lifts, signalling to Moira at the reception desk that he would see her upstairs.
Moira was about to follow them but changed her mind at the last moment. It was not a three-person scene, especially when one of the persons was a woman. Instead she returned to the package in front of her, which contained both men’s passports. Carmichael was proving to be a very efficient secretary. The receptionist also handed over an e-mail from Shea’s aircraft leasing company. The Lear would be waiting at Tampa Executive Airport at six a.m. and the flight plan from Tampa to Belize City had already been filed. Moira sighed when she read the e-mail. She had hoped that Shea would have got the message.
Back in the bar, their drinks were still on the table and Moira retook her place on the couch. She doubted that Shea would be in a fit condition to board the Lear at six a.m. so maybe they would finally have a chance to lie in and possibly enjoy the buffet breakfast. To her, knowing what had happened to Gardiner counted as a result. Nobody was going to jail and the great Marlboro con would probably never see the light of day. Hernandez had been very clever.
CHAPTER SIXTY
M oira was in a deep sleep when the telephone in her room rang at five fifteen in the morning. She stretched out her hand, grabbed the phone and put it to her ear. A disembodied voice told her it was her alarm call. She looked at her watch on the bedside table. She had no recollection of setting an alarm call. She looked at the lump in the bed across from hers. Brendan hadn’t stirred. It normally took a nuclear explosion to wake him. She climbed out of bed and staggered to the bathroom. Brendan was still comatose when she returned. She managed to get him into a state that might be loosely described as awake and pointed him in the direction of the bathroom. She heard the sound of running water but had no inclination to investigate further.