Nick Stephenson - Paydown (Leopold Blake Series)

“Holy shit,” Jimmy repeated. “What the hell happened?”

“You tell me,” said Mary. “You were supposed to be watching.”

Leopold pushed through and knelt by the body.

Jimmy held up his hands. “I can’t watch everyone at once, can I? I got other work to do, I can’t be expected –”

“Keep quiet, both of you,” said Leopold. “Who has had access to this cell today?”

“Just the guy’s lawyer. And the other guy bringing food. Damn, how the hell he do that with a spork?”

Leopold noticed something on the floor and bent down for a closer look. “Plastic shards. The cutlery was snapped in two, with one end filed down into a point against the wall.”

“Jesus.”

“And who said anything about him doing this to himself?”

“What, you think someone else broke in and killed him with a spork?” Mary said. “I don’t see any signs of a struggle here. No defensive wounds. The guy knew we were on to him; maybe prison was too much for him to face. It’s not unheard-of.”

Leopold sniffed the air. “What’s that smell?”

“What smell?”

He turned to Jimmy. “You let people smoke in here?”

“Not since Bloomberg’s witch hunt. Why?”

“There’s the stink of tobacco smoke in here. You not getting it?”

“My sense of smell ain’t what it used to be. Two decades of industrial cleaning products will do that to you.”

Mary tipped her head and sniffed. “Yeah, I can smell it too. Kinda sweet. Not like cigarettes. Something else.”

Leopold froze. The hairs on the back of his neck prickled. He turned to Mary, his eyes wide.

“What is it?” she asked.

“I recognize the scent from before,” he said. “We’ve come across it twice already, and I never made the connection. The smell isn’t from cigarette smoke,” he pulled out his cell phone and dialed a number. “It’s from pipe tobacco.”

Leopold paced the office. Mary sat at her desk watching, nursing a mug of coffee.

“Want to run that by me again?” she said.

“Think, think, think,” he tapped his forehead with an index finger. “Tobacco smoke. The employee at the hotel reeked of it. At Biggs’ house, there was an old pipe spilling ash all over the place. Then again in the cells. All three times, the same smell.”

“Plenty of people smoke pipes.”

“You ever run into three different guys smoking the same flavored tobacco, all in the same day? Smelled like cherry to me.”

Mary blinked. “Okay, maybe not. Still, it’s not exactly groundbreaking evidence.”

“Not by itself. But sometimes the smaller things lead us to the bigger things. You checked Biggs’ file?”

“Yeah. Nothing much there we didn’t already know.”

“You got a photo?”

“The guy’s got no record. No photo, no prints, no DNA. Why?”

“Call it a hunch.” Leopold turned his cell phone’s speaker on and lay the handset down on the desk. It was playing a Muzak rendition of “Uptown Girl.” He pulled Mary’s keyboard toward him and leaned in to get a view of the computer monitor.

“What the hell are you doing?”

“Just bear with me.” He loaded up the internet browser and punched Biggs’ name and address into the search bar. A few dozen relevant results bounced back, the top ones belonging to various social media sites.

“This isn’t exactly the police database,” said Mary.

Leopold ignored her and clicked on the top result. “Look. Recognize this guy?” He pointed at an image of a gaunt, aging man with black skin and gray hair.

“No, should I?”

“What about these photos?” He opened up the other search results, all pictures of the same man.

“You’re kidding me,” she said.

“Afraid not.”

“The guy we spoke to in Brooklyn…”

“Wasn’t Biggs.”

“Shit.”

“Well put.”

“Then who the hell were we talking to?”

Leopold grinned. “My guess: if the pipe smoker was the inside man at the hotel, our fake Biggs was probably the one with the connections. You know, the middleman. He dispatched the real Biggs and waits at the apartment for the cops to show. That just leaves the brains.”

“Don’t get all Wizard of Oz on me,” said Mary. “You’re just guessing here. We’re going to need more than that.”

“You really think the fake Biggs, whatever his name is, had the mental capacity to pull something like this off?”

Mary folded her arms. “I’m no psychologist. How would I know.”

“You should learn to rely on your instincts. We both know there must have been someone else involved, someone who had working knowledge of the bank. Now that Creed is dead, our pool of suspects just got a little smaller.”

“Not small enough. We need more to work with.”

“I’m working on it.” He picked up his cell phone just as the Muzak stopped and a man’s voice came on the line. Leopold walked away from Mary’s desk, just out of earshot.

“Blake?” The voice was strongly accented, maybe Puerto Rican.

“Yes. You have the information I need?”

“Your contact had to work fast. He had to drop a lot of important clients.”

“He’ll be well compensated. I trust you’ll see to that. What have you got for me?”

“The wire transfer came from an account in the Cayman Islands. The corporation was a shell, as you might expect. We followed the trail through Geneva and then back west to the Caribbean.

“You got a company name for me?”

“Yeah. Umbrella corporation calls itself ‘Plutus Inc.’ I got a list of the directors and shareholders, though it’s pretty short.”

Leopold felt his pulse quicken. “Let me guess. Just two people? Share a surname?”

There was a pause on the line. “Yeah, how’d you know?”

“Let’s just call it instinct. Text me the names.” He hung up without waiting for a response and made his way back to Mary’s desk.

“Let me guess: another lead?” she said, downing the remains of her coffee.

“You could say that.” His cell phone vibrated and he held up the screen so Mary could see. “Somebody’s been very, very naughty.”

“Absolutely no freakin’ way,” said Captain Oakes. The captain stood up, slamming two heavy palms down onto his desk. “And who the hell is this guy?” he glanced at Leopold.

“Sir, Blake has been working with us on this case from the beginning,” said Mary. “He found a lead on the killer. We need to get out there.”

“And you want me to sign off on this? Based on what evidence?”

“We found data on Teddy Gordon’s hard drive that suggests several accounts at Needham Brothers were being scammed. We also know that Gordon was killed because of his connection with the fraudulent activity. We also believe that Vincent Creed was set up to take the fall by another party.”

Oakes slumped back into his seat. “You still haven’t got any proof. This is all a hunch.”

Leopold opened his mouth to speak, but Mary cut him off.

“We came across information regarding a substantial deposit made into Creed’s bank account on the day of Gordon’s murder,” she said. “This payment was sent to make Creed look more guilty. We traced the accounts to an umbrella corporation.”

“This is Plutus Inc.?”

“Yes, sir. ‘Plutus666’ is also the password that Teddy Gordon and his wife use on their home computer, the same computer where we found all the documents covering the scammed accounts at Needham. The Gordons did a good job of making it look like Creed had authored the files, but our tech teams managed to see past that.”