Andrew Gross - The Dark Tide

“I can’t. I can’t,” he said, trembling. “There are procedures for this sort of thing. Even if I agreed, it’s governed by international banking regulations. Laws…”

“Back to those regulations again.” The mustached man shook his head and sighed loudly.

The taller man holding Ezra removed something from his jacket pocket.

Ronald’s eyes bulged wide.

It was a tin of lighter fluid.

Ronald dove out of the chair to stop him, but the mustached man hit him on the side of the head with the gun, sending him sprawling onto the floor.

“Oh, Jesus Lord, no!” Edith screamed, trying to wrench the man off her son. He elbowed her away.

Then, smiling, the man holding Ezra took the crying boy by the collar and began to douse him with fluid.

Ronald launched himself again, but the mustached man had cocked his gun and raised it to Ronald’s forehead. “I keep remembering asking you to sit down.”

Ezra was bawling now.

“Here’s your cell phone, Mr. Torbor,” pushing Ronald his phone from across the table. “Make the call and we just go away. Now.”

“I can’t.” Ronald held out trembling hands. “Jesus God in heaven, don’t. I…can’t.”

“I know he’s a bit off, Mr. Torbor.” The man shook his head. “But he’s just an innocent boy. Shame to hurt him in this way. For a bunch of silly regulations…Anyway, not a pretty thing at all for your wife to witness, is it?”

“Ronald!”

The man holding Ezra took out a plastic lighter. He flicked it, sparking up a steady flame. He brought it close to the child’s damp shirt.

“No!” Edith shrieked. “Ronald, please, don’t let them do this! For God’s sake, do whatever the hell they’re asking. Ronald, please…”

Ezra was screaming. The man holding him drew the flame closer. The man with the mustache pushed the phone in front of Ronald and looked steadily at him.

“Exactamente, Mr. Torbor. Fuck the regulations. It’s time to make that call.”

Karen rushed to drop Alex off at the Arch Street Teen Center that Tuesday afternoon, for a youth fund-raiser for the Kids in Crisis shelter in town.

She was excited when Hauck had called. They agreed to meet in the bar at L’Escale, overlooking Greenwich Harbor, which was virtually next door. She was eager to tell him what she’d found.

Hauck was sitting at a table near the bar and waved when she came in.

“Hi.” She waved, folding her leather jacket over the back of her chair.

For a moment she moaned about how traffic was getting crazy in town this time of day. “Try to find a parking space on the avenue.” She rolled her eyes in mock frustration. “You have to be a cop!”

“Seems fair to me.” Hauck shrugged, suppressing a smile.

“I forgot who I was talking to!” Karen laughed. “Can’t you do anything about this?”

“I’m on leave, remember? When I’m back, I promise that’ll be the very first thing.”

“Good!” Karen nodded brightly, as if pleased. “Don’t let me down. I’m relying on you.”

The waitress came over, and it took Karen about a second to order a pinot grigio. Hauck was already nursing a beer. She’d put on some makeup and a nice beige sweater over tight-fitting pants. Something made her want to look good. When her wine came, Hauck tilted his glass at her.

“We ought to think of something,” she said.

“To simpler times,” he proposed.

“Amen.” Karen grinned. They touched glasses lightly.

It was a little awkward at first, and they just chatted. She told him about Alex’s involvement on the Kids in Crisis board, which Hauck was impressed with and called “a pretty admirable thing.”

Karen smiled. “Community-service requirement, Lieutenant. All the kids have to do it. It’s a college application rite of spring.”

She asked him where his daughter went to school and he said, “ Brooklyn,” the short version, leaving out Norah and Beth. “She’s growing up pretty fast,” he said. “Pretty soon I’ll be doing the community-service thing.”

Karen’s eyes lit up. “Just wait for the SATs!”

Gradually Hauck grew relaxed, the lines between them softening just a little, suddenly feeling alive in the warm glow of her bright hazel eyes, the cluster of freckles dotting her cheeks, the trace of her accent, the fullness of her lips, the honey color of her hair. He decided to hold back what he’d learned about Dolphin and Charles’s connection to it. About Thomas Mardy and how he’d been at the hit-and-run that day. Until he knew for sure. It would only hurt her more-send things down a path he would one day regret. Still, when he gazed at Karen Friedman, he was transported back to a part of his life that had not been wounded by loss. And he imagined-in the ease of her laugh, the second glass of wine, how she laughed at all the lines he had hoped she would-she was feeling the same way, too.

At a lull, Karen put down her wine. “So you said you made a little headway down there?”

He nodded. “You remember that hit-and-run that happened the day of the bombing, when I came by?”

“Of course I remember.”

Hauck put down his beer. “I found out why the kid died.”

Her eyes widened. “Why?”

He had thought carefully about this before she arrived, what he might say, and he heard himself retelling how some company was carrying on a fraud of some kind down there, a petroleum company, and how the kid’s father-a harbor pilot-had stumbled right into the middle of it.

“It was a warning”-Hauck shrugged-“if you can believe it. To get him to back off.”

“It was murder?” Karen said, a jolt of shock shooting through her.

Hauck nodded. “Yeah.”

She sat back, stunned. “That’s so terrible. You never thought it was an accident. My God…”

“And it worked.”

“What do you mean?”

“The old man stopped. He buried it. It never would have come out if I didn’t go down.”

Karen’s face turned pallid. “You said you went down there for me. How does this relate to Charles?”

How could he tell her? About Charles, Dolphin, the empty ships? Or how Charles had been in Greenwich that day? How could he hurt her more, more than she’d already been, until he knew? Knew for sure.

And being with her now, he knew why.

“The company,” Hauck said, “the one that was doing this down there, had a connection to Harbor.”

The color drained from Karen’s face. “To Charlie?”

Hauck nodded. “Dolphin Petroleum. You know the name?”

She shook her head.

“It may have been part of a group of investments he owned.”

Karen hesitated. “What do you mean, investments?”

“Offshore.”

Karen put a hand to her mouth and looked at him. It only echoed what Saul had said. “You think Charles was involved? In this hit-and-run?”

“I don’t want to get ahead of ourselves, Karen.”

“Please don’t protect me, Ty. You’re thinking he was involved?”

“I don’t know.” He exhaled. He held back the fact that Charles had been up there that day. “There are still a lot more leads I have to run down.”

“Leads?” Karen sat back. Her eyes had a strange, confused look to them. She pressed her palms together in front of her lips and nodded. “I found something, too, Ty.”

“What?”

“I don’t know, but it’s scaring me a little-like you are now.”

She described how she’d been going through some of Charles’s old things, as he’d asked, his old files, had spoken to his old secretary and travel agent but been unable to find anything.

Until she came across a name.

“The guy had called me a couple of times, just after Charles died. Someone who worked for him.” She described how Jonathan Lauer had tried to contact her, the cryptic messages he’d left. Some things you ought to know…“I just couldn’t deal with it back then. It was too much. I mentioned them to Saul. He said it was just personnel stuff and he’d take care of it.”