John Lescroart - Betrayal

A minute later, Hunt was shaking hands with a good-looking man in his mid-thirties. With his mustache he bore a slight resemblance to Saddam Hussein, although he was dressed in American clothes-black slacks that looked to be the bottom portion of a man's suit and a light blue dress shirt with an open neck. "Mr. Hunt, I'm Abdel Khalil. Would you like something to drink? A cup of tea, perhaps, coffee, Coke."

"Coffee would be nice. Black, please."

"Fine. We can take it in my office." Khalil snapped his fingers twice quickly and the boy jumped, bowed, and disappeared.

Hunt followed Khalil to a more spacious room in the back corner of the building. From the chair he was directed to in front of the standard wooden desk, he had an unimpeded view of the Bay and of planes landing at the airport.

The room itself, like its counterpart outside, was functional in the extreme. An oversized map of the Bay Area was pinned to one of the walls above a low credenza. A computer had its own small table at a right angle to the desk, which Khalil went around and sat behind. He'd barely gotten settled when the receptionist knocked and entered with a cup of coffee and handed it to Hunt, then closed the door behind him on the way out.

"Now." Khalil clasped his hands on the desk. He spoke educated and uninflected English. "Mr. Hunt. How's the coffee? Good. Now, how can I help you? I understand you're writing an article of some kind?"

This was always the tough part. Hunt placed his saucer on the tiny table next to him. "Actually, sir, that's not the case, and I apologize. I'm a private investigator working with a lawyer who's doing the appeal on the Evan Scholler case and if you'd like to kick me out of here, I'd understand."

Surprised, but not completely unamused, Khalil waved that off. "You've barely gotten settled. Why would you think I wouldn't talk to you about Evan Scholler?"

"It could be a touchy subject."

"And why would that be?"

"I think the assumption was that he killed your parents."

"Yes." Khalil's face darkened. "That was a difficult time. But I hope we've put that behind us. Did you say Scholler was appealing his conviction?"

Hunt nodded.

"Well, I wish him luck."

"You do? That's a bit of a surprise."

"Why is that?"

"If he killed your parents."

"But he was never charged with killing my parents. And frankly, it didn't seem to make much sense at the time, unless you bought the idea that after what happened to him over there, he hated all Iraqis and just picked them as a random couple to sacrifice." Khalil shook his head. "I never really saw that."

"So who do you think killed them?"

"I think it must have been Ron Nolan."

"Why do you say that?"

"Well, the fragmentation grenades, for example. His work, I understand, brought him to and from Iraq frequently, where he would have access to that stuff and would have been able to bring it back here by military transport without having to bother with customs."

"But why?"

"Why what?"

"Why your parents? What was Nolan's motive?"

Khalil grimaced, the memory of it all beginning to play back. "I believe he picked up a contract to assassinate them in Iraq. Our family has business interests over there and I think-well, I had heard this, and when I told the FBI-"

"Wait a minute, please! Excuse me. You're saying you talked to the FBI, then?"

"Of course."

"And you told them that you believed Ron Nolan had killed your parents because of information that you got from Iraq?"

"Well, yes."

"And what did the FBI say?"

"They seemed to already know, and didn't disagree that that was probably what happened. They assured us they would look into it. But then, of course, after what happened to Mr. Nolan…"

"So they talked to you about the Scholler trial?"

This seemed to stump him for a minute. He half turned and looked out his window, his brow furrowed, then came back to Hunt. "I don't really recall that."

"So what did they talk to you about?" Hunt sat back, lost for a beat in his own perplexity. "But I'm sorry, I interrupted you. So you're saying the FBI didn't think Scholler killed your parents?"

"Right. That's probably a large part of the reason he never got charged with that. Everyone I've talked to in the FBI agreed that it was Nolan."

"But Nolan was never-"

"Nolan was dead, Mr. Hunt. What was anybody going to do about that? It was over, a done deal. Even if some of my brothers and cousins wanted to kill him, he was already dead."

"So you're saying Scholler did kill Nolan?"

Now Khalil showed genuine surprise. "Well, yes, of course. I don't believe anyone has any doubts about that. Do they?"

Well, as a matter of fact, yes, Hunt was going to say, my boss does. Which would have led to Khalil's next question, Then who did kill Nolan? And Hunt's answer-Hardy's answer-would have been: Uh, you guys. The Khalils. But suddenly, that was not how this was going.

Instead, Hunt scrambled. "Okay. Nobody doubts Scholler killed Nolan. And the FBI told you that Nolan probably killed your parents. Did they know why? Or who put this contract out?"

"The short answer is not at first, they couldn't find anything, although I heard from relatives that they interrogated a lot of people over there."

It was all Hunt could do to keep his mouth from dropping open in amazement. "In Iraq? The FBI interrogated people about your parents' death all the way over in Iraq?"

"Of course. That's where the trail led."

"But they didn't find out who did it?"

"Eventually, they believed they did, yes." Now Khalil allowed a small smile. "And we-my family-verified that they were right. Your FBI, they know what they are doing, you know. They're extremely competent and efficient."

Hunt sat back. "What did they find out?"

"Well, as I say, eventually it became more or less obvious. But first you have to know that my father, Ibrahim, was a brilliant businessman. He directed his youngest brother, Mahmoud, in some of his widespread business dealings in Iraq. Mahmoud was trying to supply contract workers on a reconstruction job over there, a very lucrative one, but the main supplier-Mahmoud's chief competitor, in fact-was a Kurd named Kuvan Krekar. The FBI became satisfied that Mr. Krekar took out the contract on my mother and father to disrupt our business over there, and to a large extent he was successful. In the short term." When Khalil's small smile returned, it had a chilling aspect. "I received word about two years ago that Mr. Krekar had died from an improvised explosive device. My country, as you know, is going through some very violent times. But the good news is that Mahmoud and his business have been thriving lately, and we believe we have turned the corner over there."

At five-thirty, Hardy and Hunt were sharing one of the window booths at Lou the Greek's, a bar and, in some people's opinion, restaurant located just across the street from the Hall of Justice. The squabble over whether it was in fact a true restaurant worthy of the name derived from the uneven quality of the food they served at the place. Many of the regular patrons came in only to drink at the tiny bar in the front, and didn't ever try to eat the constantly changing Special that Lou's wife, Chui, created every single day.

The Special was the only food item on the menu, and in deference to Chui's Chinese and Lou's Greek ethnicities, she most frequently tried to make different combinations of ingredients that included both of these two cultures' rather violently disparate culinary traditions. Thus, on any given day, the Lou's Special might be taramasalata (fish roe) wontons in an avgolemono broth, moussaka potstickers, or the oft-requested Yeanling Clay Bowl, the ingredients of which had once stumped a panel of six of the city's all-star chefs after DA Clarence Jackman had publicly referred to it as his "favorite lunch in the city."