The Echo of the Whip Read online

“Yeah. How exactly is that a federal responsibility, Mr. Co-director?” Zapata asked.

  Tall Wolf explained McGill’s notion that if embryos were people, the crime they were looking at was kidnapping not robbery. Then he added, “Normally, that’d bring the FBI in on the case, but you know how that would go. They always want to be the lead dog. Wouldn’t leave much for LAPD to do. On the other hand, I’m more of a low-key guy. Happy to give the credit to others. You can check my record on that. But if you want to go by the book, I can call FBI Deputy Director Byron DeWitt right now.”

  He took out his phone.

  Zapata and MacDuff got the message: McGill and his pal were the guys with the clout. If the local cops tried to muscle them, they’d be the ones out in the cold.

  Not wanting to put any noses out of joint, however, McGill played the nice guy.

  “Listen, gents, I was a cop, too. I know how you feel. I’ll also be happy to see you and LAPD get the credit here. All I want is to get my client’s embryos back.”

  If something additional, of benefit to the president, also came to hand, well, so much the better, but the cops didn’t need to know about that, McGill thought.

  “So we’ll all be one big happy family?” MacDuff’s tone said he didn’t believe in such fairy tales.

  McGill responded, “I can tell you right now that Ms. Kersten believes her ex-husband, Edmond Whelan, is behind the theft.”

  “Not that he did it, though, right?” MacDuff asked.

  “No,” McGill said, “from what I’ve heard, he delegates.”

  Zapata smiled, “Delegates, that’s good. Chicago cops talk like that?”

  Letting McGill know they’d done at least some homework on him.

  “Not much,” he said. “I’ve picked up a bit of polish living in the White House.”

  Letting them know just how much power he had backing him.

  Turning back to the matter at hand, MacDuff asked, “Did Ms. Kersten say why Mr. Whelan would steal the embryos?”

  “Hard feelings,” McGill told him. “They didn’t part happily. I’m sure you’ve seen that before.”

  The expressions on the two cops’ faces said they’d lived that experience.

  McGill showed them the image on his phone of the spoiled embryo Mira Kersten had sent him. Forwarded it to both of the cops’ phones. Literally a picture of cooperation.

  “We want to talk to the lady,” Zapata said, “but she said she wants to meet with you first.”

  McGill suggested, “I can call her, ask if she’s ready to see the whole crew of us.”

  The cops didn’t like the idea of being co-opted into anyone’s crew, but they saw that McGill was making an effort to bridge their differences. That or he was being one slick SOB working a set piece. Not that they could say so to his face. They queried each other with a silent look and came to an agreement with a nod.

  “Yeah, that’d be good,” MacDuff conceded.

  “Okay,” McGill said, “but let’s see what we might learn here first.”

  Dr. Hansen was all for that. As they proceeded into the clinic, Mindy Crozier provided a voluble narrative of what she remembered happening. Trying to impress the LAPD guys, but the men from Washington more.

  Both McGill and Tall Wolf had the same thought. The young security guard might be their most valuable source of information — into the workings of the fertility clinic and what, if anything, the LAPD detectives came to discover there.

  Amsterdam, Netherlands

  Inspector Bram Dekens owned up to his ploy over dinner at a restaurant called Guts & Glory that was currently featuring chicken. Not the fried kind that came in a bucket. The whole roasted free-range bird. With wine and dessert, it was almost enough to make Special Agent Benjamin forgive Dekens for using her as a patsy.

  “I couldn’t use one of my own people,” the inspector told the American visitor. “The criminal element here has almost a sixth sense for recognizing police personnel.”

  “That or they’ve got an inside source,” Benjamin said.

  Dekens put a hand to his mouth, as if suffering a tickle in his throat.

  He coughed and Benjamin thought she heard a camouflaged, “Possibly.”

  She wasn’t rude enough to ask him to repeat himself.

  “I could never take the chance of using a civilian” Dekens added. “A display of anxiety would be a certain giveaway. Spoil the whole plan. Maybe cause the loss of an innocent life.”

  Benjamin said, “But a hardass American cop, someone who could stand up to a creep, would be an acceptable risk.”

  “Yes, exactly. I have to admit, though, I thought the FBI would be sending a man when the idea occurred to me. When I heard a woman was coming, I paused to reconsider. Then I said to myself, ‘Now, Bram, don’t be a sexist. Women can be formidable.’” He raised his glass to Benjamin. “You more than justified my faith.”

  Benjamin laughed. “You’re so full of shit. Does that kind of BS really work on women over here?”

  Dekens produced a devilish grin. “For me, quite often, yes.”

  “Okay, I’ll drink to that bit of honesty.”

  She raised her glass and they both drank.

  “So that creep I smacked, why did you want him so bad?”

  “Tariq Kasim was an efficient but non-political drug dealer. He never touched any product or dirty money himself, but he manipulated others brilliantly. We’ve pruned any number of limbs from his organization but they quickly grow back. Him, we’ve never been able to uproot.”

  “Can’t just send him back to where he came from?”

  “He was born in Amsterdam. Legally, he’s as Dutch as I am.”

  “So he’s been a pain in your ass for a long time. But something had to change. Top guys don’t go threatening people on park benches with physical harm.”

  Dekens said, “In your American idiom, Kasim got religion. In truth, it was forced on him.”

  “By guys with beards who curse the decadent West?” Benjamin asked.

  “Yes. We police weren’t able to catch up with Kasim, but our intelligence people tell us he was given a rather thorough talking to by people who told him if he wanted to keep his head he’d have to become far more devout in his faith and donate the majority of his earnings to the cause.”

  “But it was fine to keep selling addictive narcotics to the infidels.”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “These terrorists have a name?”

  Dekens told her and offered a suggestion. “You should let your DEA know of this partnership.”

  Benjamin nodded. “So what did I do for you today? Park my backside in a reserved seat? Interrupt a meeting Kasim was supposed to have with a supplier?”

  “Exactly,” Dekens said.

  “Well, that explains why he was so testy. By any chance were Kasim’s new business partners watching from a distance? Them and the other guy’s people, of course. You can’t be too careful in this kind of thing.”

  Dekens smile was one of admiration this time. “You are a credit to the FBI.”

  “Yeah, I’m going places in the Bureau, something for you to keep in mind. Anyway, having all those people see Kasim attempt to assault me and get taken down by both a woman and the cops, his professional future can’t look bright at all. So, now that you’ve got him on the crime of attempting to assault a woman, how much do you think you can get out of him?”

  Another hint of Dekens’ nature filled his eyes; the guy could be merciless.

  The inspector said, “He’ll tell us everything. Otherwise, we apologize to him for an improper arrest and let him go.”

  “And if he gets lucky he’ll be gunned down. Not so lucky, he does lose his head.”

  “Either way, he would not be missed,” Dekens said.

  He turned his attention to his meal. The chicken was delicious. Benjamin liked that, a guy who could think of throwing someone to the wolves and not let it spoil his appetite. Picking up her own knife and fork, she wished Byron DeWit
t could have been more like that, ruthless, professionally and otherwise.

  When the white burgundy arrived as the digestif, Dekens turned his attention to Benjamin’s professional needs. “And now that you know how much you’ve helped me, how may I be of service to you?”

  “I’m looking for Tyler Busby,” she said.

  Dekens smiled. “Your fugitive, phantom billionaire. He’s been gone quite some time now, hasn’t he?”

  “Over a year.”

  “Telling you that he still has quite a bit of money he’s managed to hide from your government. Otherwise, you’d have found him by now.”

  Benjamin said, “We came to that conclusion some time ago, and there are a great many people looking for Busby’s money as a way to find him. There were also quite a few military personnel looking for him in the jungles of the Philippines. They’ve concluded he was not taken prisoner by the local guerrillas.”

  Dekens sipped his wine. “You’re not here to revisit what hasn’t worked; you’ve thought of something new.”

  That compliment hit home. Benjamin smiled. “When following the money doesn’t work, you need another trail to explore. Tyler Busby, it’s well documented, just can’t do without women. Lots and lots of them.”

  “A common failing,” Dekens said with a straight face.

  “Yeah, but rare among his class, he didn’t mind being seen and photographed in public with women who were known to be high-end prostitutes. No one really called him on it because the business end of the relationships with the ladies was handled discreetly.”

  “And, no doubt, because anyone who might dare to be so gauche would also have his private life examined. By the media or Busby’s private detectives,” Dekens said.

  “That, too. So my idea is: If following the money doesn’t work, follow the nookie.”

  Benjamin saw that nookie was a new word to the inspector, but he made the correct inference and smiled. No doubt adding the term to his vocabulary. He nodded his approval.

  “Your thought is Mr. Busby, wherever he might be hiding, wants to keep his sex life robust with the same type of women he previously … entertained.”

  “Exactly.”

  “That is brilliant.”

  “Imaginative anyway.”

  “And you’ve come to see me in Amsterdam because we know a thing or two about international sex tourism,” Dekens said.

  “More than just the girls in street-view windows. I’m told you know about the high-end trade, the kind Busby and other big spenders like.”

  A new, guarded look appeared on Dekens’ face. “Possibly.”

  Benjamin didn’t like his sudden reluctance. “Don’t get cold feet on me, Inspector. I don’t give a damn about any European big shots who don’t mind paying for sex, but I think this is the way I can nail Busby.”

  Get a promotion to assistant deputy director, too, but Benjamin didn’t need to share that.

  For his part, Dekens now saw that he was dealing with a woman who would thrash him professionally as mercilessly as she’d broken Kasim’s bones. That she was American didn’t lessen the threat. Just protesting the way he’d used her to his superiors would sting.

  If the FBI were to look at the KLPD as uncooperative, well, his job would be sacrificed before the government’s relationship with the Americans would.

  The problem was, many of the “European big shots” who paid for their carnal pleasure were members of neighboring governments. Embarrassing them would also not be good for him. But on balance …

  “Of course, I’ll help you,” Dekens told Benjamin, “but my inquiries will have to be discreet and singularly focused.”

  “Sure, those considerations are fine, but don’t try to drag things out, hoping I’ll go away. I won’t. That’s not who I am.”

  She took her iPad mini out of her purse. Showed the inspector photos of women who’d been Tyler Busby’s escorts at public functions in New York and Washington. Told him the FBI had tabbed the ladies as prostitutes.

  She said, “We don’t know if Busby has called on any of these women in the past year, but if their faces haven’t wrinkled or their figures sagged, maybe he has. If not, we’d like to know if others of their type with the same professional connections have traveled to out of the way places. Locales that women like them wouldn’t normally visit. You understand what I’m saying?”

  “I do,” Dekens said. Still hedging his bet, he asked, “Would any of the women I might locate be required to testify in American courts?”

  Benjamin shook her head. “We don’t care who they screw or if any of them banged Busby. All we want to do is find the SOB. We’ve got enough to hang him as it is.”

  Shock filled Dekens’ voice. “The United States still hangs people?”

  Benjamin, a lawyer as well as a federal officer, had to check her memory. “New Hampshire allows it by choice of the corrections officials; Washington state allows it by choice of the condemned person. But I was speaking figuratively. The federal government wants to lock him up for the rest of his miserable life. How’s that?”

  “Much better. I will begin my inquiries first thing tomorrow.”

  “Terrific. Just so you know, you prove helpful to the United States in this matter, we’ll see that you, the KLPD and your government get full credit. Or we won’t say a word. Your choice.”

  “Yes, it’s always good to have choices.”

  Dekens chose to gulp his aperitif, put Benjamin in a cab to her hotel and call it a night.

  Walter Reed National Military Medical Center — Bethesda, Maryland

  By the whim of irony and the dictate of political necessity, Joan Renshaw, following her psychotic break, had been transferred from the federal correctional institution in Danbury, Connecticut to a secure ward in the same military medical facility where Reverend Burke Godfrey had taken his last breath.

  Burke Godfrey, of course, had been the televangelist husband of Erna Godfrey, the woman Joan Renshaw had choked to death. When Renshaw’s change of address had made the news, there had been public gatherings of people praying for the late preacher to wreak supernatural vengeance on his wife’s killer. Thinking just the opposite, the government had moved the prisoner with thoughts of greater security and a higher quality of care.

  Thus far, mass supplication for supernatural payback had yet to make it to the top of the Almighty’s to-do list. Even so, the nature of Renshaw’s continued existence didn’t rise beyond simple respiration and being fed and drained through various tubes. Her condition was described as Kahlbaum Syndrome, motionless catatonia.

  She exhibited what was called waxy flexibility. Placed into a given posture, she would hold it indefinitely. Her position in the bed which formed the boundaries of her world was changed regularly to avoid the development of bed sores.

  Available treatments included anti-psychotic medications and electro-convulsive therapy. Both of those avenues were fraught with risks and adverse effects. A conservative approach — intravenous feeding, hydration and close monitoring — was the chosen approach for the patient.

  Just in case she made a spontaneous recovery, though, her bed was wired to an alarm that would sound if her weight was removed from it. Four cameras also watched her 24/7. The monitors receiving the feed from those cameras were what a duty nurse happened to glance at and see the first sign of motion from Joan Renshaw since she’d been admitted.

  Renshaw smacked her forehead with her right hand.

  The nurse blinked. Now, the patient was back in her normal supine position: arms at her sides. The video feed was recorded; the nurse played it back. Watched Renshaw slap herself three times.

  Looked like physical self-criticism for making a really stupid mistake.

  Like: Dummy, how could you have done that?

  Now, though, she was back to imitating a mannequin.

  The nurse took one more look at the blow and then called people well above her pay-grade to figure it all out. Had it just been a moment of catatonic excitement
or was the patient finally waking up? Boy oh boy, wouldn’t that cause a ruckus?

  Carmel, California

  Edmond Whelan sat on the veranda of his borrowed estate and looked out at the darkening Pacific Ocean. The sun had just about set and … there, in the wink of an eye, the top arc dipped below the horizon. Thing was, there was still light in the sky. Would be for a few minutes. Whelan had liked that phenomenon from the first time he’d seen the lingering light when his parents had brought him to California as a young boy.

  He’d asked his mother and father how the sun’s light could remain after it had disappeared. Neither of them had a scientific explanation, but his father had given an answer that had helped to mold Whelan’s life. “Powerful things leave their mark.”

  Resting on Whelan’s lap was the only printed copy of his masterpiece: Permanent Power. The volume was hand-bound in claret leather with its pages edged in gold leaf. Originally intended to be Whelan’s doctoral thesis at Georgetown University, the document had become something far more valuable: his passport to greatness.

  Not to fame, though. Far from it. His overt achievements, by design, would leave him remembered only as a minor functionary of a widely despised institution, the Congress of the United States. Whelan’s intellectual inquiry had begun with a simple question: Under our current form of federal government, how might one of the two major political parties achieve either actual or virtual permanent power?

  Up until leaving for Washington, Whelan’s background in politics had been entirely academic. He’d never stuffed envelopes or hustled votes for any candidate at any level of government. The nuts and bolts of practical campaigning — shaking the nose-picking hands of perfect strangers, good God — had always struck him as too grubby to consider.

  Even when local pols had dropped by his parents’ Beacon Hill home only his mother’s endless childhood lessons in etiquette had compelled him to behave graciously. Those people were nothing more than well-heeled beggars. If allowed into the Whelan house at all, he thought, they should have entered through the kitchen door with the rest of the tradespeople.