Lee Vance - The Garden of Betrayal

“You’re not any kind of cop,” Mohler said, turning to face me. “You wouldn’t be alone if you were. Which makes you-what? A shakedown artist?”

“An interested party.”

“An interested party who broke into my computer system,” he said, reaching into his shirt pocket and pulling out a hard copy of the e-mail I’d sent him. “And who’s threatening to expose me to the SEC.” He ripped the printed e-mail into pieces and threw it to the ground. “And what’s the SEC going to do about it? My customers and my accounts are all offshore.”

“Then why are you here?” I repeated.

He moved toward me, eyes wild, and I realized how near he was to hysteria.

“Because you don’t understand what you’re doing. Haven’t you wondered what kind of people set up this sort of operation? And what they might do if some small-time nobody threatens to blow it for them?”

“I’ve wondered about who they are. Why don’t you tell me?”

He took a step backward, toward the door.

“And end up dead? I don’t think so.”

It was the reaction we’d expected.

“You’d be more persuasive if you brought some of these bad men with you,” I said, deliberately provocative. “All I’m seeing is a broken-down stock jockey.”

He flinched as if I’d slapped him and began digging a hand purposefully in his other pocket. My heart rate jumped. The unmanageable risk at the core of our plan was that Mohler proved to be violent himself. It was why Reggie and Claire had insisted on the gun. I rose, groping for my weapon, but Mohler beat me to the draw.

“Take it,” he said, thrusting a fat white envelope toward me. “That’s ten thousand dollars. It was all the cash I could get on short notice. I can get more, lots more, but you have to be patient. You have to work with me on this.”

I pushed the envelope away and settled back down onto the bed, trying not to betray how scared I’d been.

“Why?” I demanded. “So these guys you claim to work for won’t kill me? Stop bullshitting me. If you had that kind of muscle at your disposal, you wouldn’t be trying to pay me off.”

Sweat shone on his forehead. He held the envelope out again, his hand trembling.

“Work with me, because we’re in this together now. If they knew I’d been careless, they’d kill me, too.”

I took the cash from him and tossed it on the bed.

“Sit,” I ordered, pointing to the chair. “You have to answer a few questions before we strike any kind of deal.”

He collapsed onto the chair.

“First, tell me how you got involved in this whole thing.”

He edged forward and began working his fingers nervously along the brim of his hat again.

“Why do you care?”

“Because I want to know who I’m becoming partners with.”

He nodded rapidly, as if eager to persuade me of his cooperativeness.

“I was working as an account rep at Dean Witter back in the mid-nineties. I signed a couple of geriatrics as clients and did a few trades to try to make them some money.”

“But it didn’t work out,” I prompted, having heard similar stories innumerable times before. “So you did a few more trades and lost more money. Someone complained.”

“Right,” he said, sounding bitter. “The compliance guys at Dean Witter accused me of churning. They ratted me out to the SEC. The SEC investigated, and suddenly it was securities fraud because there was a problem with some statements. I got a call from the U.S. Attorney, offering me two to four years in jail if I took a deal and threatening me with five to seven if I didn’t.”

“What did you do?”

“I was still trying to figure it out when I got a call out of the blue from some lawyer I never heard of. He said he could get me off, and that I had friends in high places. I didn’t know much, but I knew I didn’t have any friends in high places.”

“Let me guess. Your problems went away.”

“Right. The SEC backed off, so the U.S. Attorney dropped the case. I even got severance from Dean Witter. It was sweet.”

He smiled at the recollection, still gleeful at having put one over on the powers that almost crushed him.

“But your new friend wanted a return favor.”

The smile vanished, replaced by a look of resignation.

“I was kind of into the whole thing at first. Nice office, good salary, no pressure. Once a month I have to figure out how to allocate trades between a bunch of different accounts, to move the right amounts of money back and forth. It was easy. But it’s been the same thing for ten years now, and I got to admit, it gets kind of old.”

“No special projects?” I asked, thinking of the Petronuevo transaction.

“A little private equity sometimes. Most of the time I don’t even get to read the paperwork. I just sign where I’m told to sign.”

“Told by whom?” I asked, circling back to the only question I genuinely cared about.

He shook his head, looking scared again.

“Fine,” I said, trying another tack. “Just explain how it works.”

He nodded rapidly again.

“I get most of my instructions on the phone. And there’s a guy who comes around to collect signatures. Mr. Smith, he calls himself, like it’s a big joke.”

“Nice guy?”

He shook his head sharply.

“Not a nice guy?”

“It’s why we have to be careful. You don’t know these people.”

“Tell me.”

He dropped his eyes to the carpet nervously.

“Smith wanted me to sign some legal papers a couple of years ago. They were in French. I asked how I was supposed to sign if I couldn’t read them. ‘With a pen,’ he told me. I said no. I’d signed all kinds of stuff before, without ever reading any of it. But it was the way he was always treating me, like I was a complete nobody. It made me mad.”

“What did he do?”

Mohler glanced up and fixed me with a pathetic smile.

“He put a knife to my throat and made me hold my left hand in a desk drawer, and then he slammed the drawer shut.” Mohler held the hand up, so I could see it. Two of the knuckles were badly misshapen. “I don’t ask any more questions.”

I almost felt bad for him.

“How do you get in touch with Smith if you need to speak with him for some reason?”

He opened his mouth to answer, but a noise from the door interrupted. A key turning in the lock. The door opened, and a man entered. Mohler moaned in fear. The man was wearing a baseball cap pulled low and had a wide, shiny scar stretching from his mouth to his left ear.

The man with the scar stepped forward silently. Reggie and Joe Belko were immediately behind him, guns drawn.

“You heard?” I asked, reaching around to the small of my back and unclipping Claire’s phone from my waistband.

“Everything,” Reggie said, removing the Bluetooth earpiece he’d been wearing to monitor our conversation from the next room. He looked at Mohler. “How about it? Is this the guy who broke your hand in the drawer? Is this Mr. Smith?”

Mohler was staring at the man with the scar like a rabbit transfixed by a snake, seemingly unable to speak.

“These guys are with me,” I assured him. “Your friend likes to keep tabs on other people’s e-mail. We were expecting you to be followed. There’s nothing for you to worry about as long as you tell the truth.”

Mohler nodded jerkily, the color drained from his face.

“How about you, Mark?” Reggie asked. “You seen this guy before?”

“Twice that I know of,” I confirmed, the recollections popping in my memory. I pulled the gun from my pocket, the elation I’d felt at the success of our plan giving way to rage. “Once at the counter in the diner, when I met with Gallegos, and once in the lobby of the Four Seasons, just before Rashid was killed.” I pointed the gun at the man who called himself Smith and put my finger on the trigger. “So, how about it? Who do you work for?”