Russell Andrews - Aphrodite

Perfect.

He waited until the kid pulled out of the gas station and got about a block away. There wasn't a lot of traffic. He was stopped at a red light. No one behind him. It was now or never.

Justin darted into the street, ran to the driver's side of the car, and flashed his police badge at the boy. In his best impersonation of a member of the LAPD, he said, "I'm going to have to ask you to step out of the car, please."

"What?" the kid said. "What's going on?"

"Just step out of the car. Leave the engine running and get out." The boy looked like he was going to cry. "What did I do?"

"Don't make me tell you again, son. Step out of the car before you're in even bigger trouble."

The kid, trembling, opened the door and stepped onto the street. A car pulled up behind them now. Justin flashed his badge at the driver, an elderly woman, and waved her on. "Making an arrest," he told her, and she drove on, first doing the obligatory rubbernecking so she could pass on any details when she got home.

"Arrest?" the kid said. "I didn't do anything."

"Come with me, please." Justin grabbed him roughly by the shirt collar, led him twenty feet away, around the corner to a white fence that had seen better days. The fence seemed to be the end of a small piece of property with a white house on it that had also seen better days. "I want you to stand against that fence, put your hands up against it, and spread your legs."

The kid was really about to bawl now. "But I didn't do anything."

"Officer Harper," Justin now said to Deena, who emerged from around the corner after pulling the Mercedes into a safe parking place. "I want you to search the car now."

"Search it?" the kid wailed. "Search for what?"

"Turn around and put your hands on the fence," Justin said. "Do not make me tell you again."

The kid's back was to Justin, and his hands were touching the fence. "You're gonna find one joint in there. One measly joint. Okay, maybe two. That's all! That's not even a crime now, is it? Is it?"

"Spread your legs." Justin kicked them apart. He pulled out his gun, flashed it in front of the boy's face. When the boy saw the steel barrel, Justin thought he'd gone too far. The kid looked like he was going to pass out. "Now keep your eyes on the fence. We know what's in your car and we know who you are. If you so much as turn your head, I'm going to have to use this."

Justin started backing away.

"This is an incredible mistake," the kid cried.

"We've got to check your car," Justin told him. "We have work to do. I don't want to have to speak to you again."

"You don't have the right person. I'm nobody! I haven't done anything! Really, I'm, like, a total wimp!"

Justin didn't answer. "You gotta believe me," the kid said. "Don't I get a phone call? Hey, that's right, I should get a phone call! Or you can make a phone call. Just call my parents! They'll tell you I'm nobody! That's not even my car! It's my dad's car! Why won't you believe me?"

The boy, too afraid to turn around, sputtered on like that for several more minutes. He didn't stop until a white-haired man, walking with the aid of a cane, opened the gate in the middle of the peeling white fence and stepped out from the yard onto the street. He looked at the boy, feet spread apart, hands on the fence, chattering away a mile a minute, tears streaming down his face. Finally the white-haired man said, "Whatcha doin'?"

"Are you talking to me?" the boy asked, breathless.

"Yup."

"I can't talk to you! This crazy cop's gonna shoot me if I so much as look at you!"

"What cop?" the white-haired man said.

"The cop right there! The guy in jeans. The off-duty cop goin' through my car!"

"What car?" the white-haired man said.

That was when the boy pulled his hands off the fence and turned his head. He looked at the white-haired man, then back at the empty street. He stared at the spot by the stop sign where his car had been. "Goddamn son of a bitch!" the kid screamed. "My father's gonna kill me!" It turned out to be a Toyota. While Justin drove, Deena went over the notes he'd made on the yellow pad, reading them aloud. Together they began to organize things and get a clearer picture of KranMar and its various subsidiaries.

"Let's keep running through it," he said. "I want to be able to picture this perfectly in my mind."

"KranMar's at the top," she said. "That's the parent corporation. Pharmaceuticals. Everything from toothpaste and mouthwash to pills that help erectile dysfunction."

"You love saying that, don't you?"

"Yeah, kind of." She grinned. "KranMar's the granddaddy of the whole shebang. Underneath they seem to own twelve research companies in America. Two in the Northeast-Ellis, in New York, and Aker, in Boston. They both specialize in DNA and cellular research. I sound like I know what I'm talking about, don't I?"

"The other ten companies are in the South, Midwest, and West Coast, right?" he continued. "And they're mostly concerned with the less adventurous products."

"Right. They're working on stuff for athlete's foot. The European labs are a little harder to figure out. It looks like he's got one in Switzerland, one in London, one somewhere in southern England. And there's one in Germany and one in southern France."

"Those are their research arms. How many other companies are there?"

"Eighty-four."

"We don't know what all of those do, do we?"

"It's incredibly complicated. I don't even know if Roger could figure all this out."

"It could be like the Enron scam," Justin said. "A lot of them could be shells, set up to hide money or even purpose." He thought for a few moments. "How many list their officers and executives?"

"All the ones that are owned by KranMar, because it's a publicly traded company. But Kransten seems to have a lot of privately held companies, too. There's nothing but addresses listed for those."

"Is there anyone named Newberg listed?"

"No. I've gone over it a million times. No Newberg."

"Read the names of the companies aloud again."

There were eighty-four spin-off companies. She named each one, and when she was done with the list he threw up his hands.

"Out of all of those, we've only run across two. Alexis Development, they own the mall that houses Growth Industries. Kransten's definitely constructed a maze that's supposed to hide his various activities. He built the mall and had his own subsidiary be the first renter. Nice financial arrangement, but I don't think it ties in to all this."

"What about the Lobster Corporation?" Deena said. "They got the bills that came from some of the old-age homes, right?"

"That's what Gary said. My guess is that Kransten uses it only for accounting purposes, to siphon checks through. Is it public or private?"

"Private. It doesn't have any names listed with it."

"Let's run through this whole thing one more time. There have to be connections we're missing."

"I'm listening."

"Susanna Morgan found out how old Bill Miller was," Justin started. "She called Marion. Marion worked for Kransten and he called someone, maybe Kransten himself, maybe whoever Newberg is. One of those two ordered Susanna killed."

"Why?"

"Hold on a second. I want to follow this through. Ed Marion was afraid that Kransten was going to kill him because he screwed up. I call Rollins to come protect Marion. Instead, Rollins kills him. Why would the FBI want to help Kransten?"

"Maybe Rollins is on the take. Maybe he's working for Kransten."

"It's too much of a coincidence. If he's on the take so are his superiors, and I don't believe Kransten's got that much muscle. Rollins couldn't have gotten himself sent to East End-he got assigned there, to the Maura Greer case, and it has to be for a reason. It's got to be connected to all this. There's a connection between her and Manwaring, that we know. And-wait a second-there's definitely a connection to Manwaring and Kransten. In that article I read, the one about Maura Greer, it said that Manwaring had done battle with the big drug companies. It was over some fake-fat-substance thing. I can't remember exactly what it was. But Manwaring wanted it banned. And the drug companies were pissed off about it."