James Patterson - Second Honeymoon

“What I really want is some more painkillers,” I said.

I wasn’t kidding, either. My head was pounding. Hell, my whole body was pounding. It hurt just to blink.

As Eldridge explained, the bad news wasn’t that Speedo got away. It was that his real name was Pierre Simone, and that he was a con man and a poker cheat.

But nothing more.

“I wouldn’t let him babysit my kids,” said Eldridge. “But he’s no murderer. He’s not violent.”

“How can you be sure?” I asked.

He folded his arms. “Trust me; I know him.”

In Eldridge’s right hand I noticed a manila envelope, but I wasn’t ready to go there yet. The “trust me” explanation needed more details. This Pierre guy nearly got me killed, after all. So riddle me this, Mr. Commissioner …

“Why would he take off on me?” I asked.

“There’s an arrest warrant on him in the States. Some bounced checks in New York, I believe,” said Eldridge. “You had an American accent and, I presume, a lot of questions for him. He panicked.”

“Panicked?”

“I’m sure you know that Turks and Caicos adheres to the extradition agreement between the United States and Great Britain.”

“Not only do I know it, I’m inclined to put it to good use,” I said, only to watch Eldridge smile. I stared at him. “You think I’m kidding?”

He raised his palms. “No. I’m sorry, it’s not that. No one told you yet, did they?”

“Told me what?”

“You blacked out after your crash. Pierre’s the one who took you onto shore to get help. I guess he felt guilty.”

“Wait. So you have him in custody?”

Eldridge chuckled. “He didn’t feel that guilty,” he said. “He took off as soon as an ambulance was called. But like I said before, he’s not a violent person.”

I was lying there in the bed listening to Eldridge, but it was what I was seeing that proved more telling. The commissioner had the same look that he had when we first met in his office. He knew something I didn’t.

Then it clicked for me.

“Shit. He’s an informant for you, isn’t he?” I asked.

Eldridge nodded. “Pierre’s been very helpful on a few cases over the years. In return, I occasionally look the other way for him. But that’s not why I’m sure he isn’t a suspect,” he said.

With that, he handed me the envelope he’d been holding. My entire investigation was about to change. The trip to Turks and Caicos had just paid off.

Chapter 20

“ANYTHING TO DECLARE?” asked the customs agent at Kennedy Airport.

Yeah. If I never see another Jet Ski for as long as I live it will still be too soon. How’s that?

Warner Breslow’s pilot had given me his phone number to use when I was ready to go home. “Just call me and I’ll fly back down to pick you up,” he said. He assumed I’d be in Turks and Caicos for at least a few days, if not longer. So did I.

That was before I opened the envelope from Commissioner Eldridge.

By noon the next day, I was landing in New York and driving out to the Breslow estate in the Belle Haven section of Greenwich. The double vision from my crash was gone. So, too, were the tweeting birds circling my head. As for my bruised ribs, I figured if I could just avoid sneezing, the hiccups, and comedy clubs, I’d be able to muddle through.

“Come in,” said Breslow, greeting me at the front door.

Not surprisingly, Breslow’s voice—as well as everything else about him—was subdued. The usual sheen from his combed-back silver hair, his trademark, was missing, as was the gleam in his eyes. Instead, those eyes were bloodshot and sporting dark circles, undoubtedly from crying and lack of sleep. His cheeks were hollow, his shoulders slouched.

But most of all, it was what I couldn’t see. What was missing. His heart . It had been ripped out of his chest.

“This way,” he said after I shook his hand.

After a left turn at the Matisse, a walk down a long hallway, and then a right at the Rothko, he led me into what he called his reading nook.

Some nook. The room, lined from floor to ceiling with books, was absolutely huge. Throw in some coffee, pastries, and loitering hipsters and it could’ve been a Barnes & Noble.

After we sat down in a couple of soft leather armchairs by the window, Breslow simply stared at me, waiting. It went without saying that he didn’t expect me back so soon, so he didn’t say it. He had to assume there was a good reason, and he was right.

“Let’s talk about your enemies,” I said, getting right to the heart of the matter.

Breslow nodded, the corners of his mouth curving up ever so slightly. It was probably the closest he’d come to a smile all week. “Aren’t you supposed to ask first if I have any? That’s what they do in the movies.”

“With all due respect, if this were the movies you’d be petting a cat right now,” I said. “No one accumulates the wealth you have without being a villain from time to time.”

“You think my son’s murder was revenge, someone trying to get even with me?” he asked.

I listened to his question, but was more focused on his tone. He was far from incredulous. I suspected the thought had already crossed his mind.

“It’s a possibility,” I said.

“How much of a possibility?”

I didn’t hesitate. “Enough that you should probably stop recording our conversation.”

He didn’t ask me how I knew, nor was I about to tell him. Instead, he simply reached over and flipped a switch on the back of the lamp that sat between us.

“I take it you’ve read my file,” he said.

Chapter 21

ACTUALLY, NO, I hadn’t read his FBI file. Not yet.

But I’d read the newspapers, especially those from some months earlier, when his firm purchased the Italian drug company Allemezia Farmaceutici, under a cloud of suspicion more bizarre and mysterious than anything in a David Lynch film.

It started with a video that appeared on the website of the leading Italian newspaper, Corriere della Sera. In vivid color, a Chinese man wearing nothing but bunny ears and a baby’s diaper could be seen hopping around a hotel suite with a couple of naked Italian prostitutes. Later in the video, after a three-way that would make Ron Jeremy blush, the guy was snorting a Great-Wall-of-China-size line of coke off the stomach of one of the girls.

Okay, just your average night in Milan, perhaps—only the man happened to be Li Yichi, the deputy general manager of Cheng Mie Pharmaceutical, the largest drug company in the world. Li was in Milan finalizing the purchase of Allemezia Farmaceutici for thirteen billion euros. It was all but a done deal.

But twenty million hits on YouTube later, it was all undone. The board of Allemezia rejected the Cheng Mie offer, citing fallout from the video.

Of course, there were many unanswered questions, not the least of which was how Li could be so careless. And what the hell was up with the bunny ears and diaper and those Italian prostitutes? Molto kinky, no?

The biggest question of all, though, had to do with who was behind the camera—both literally and figuratively. Had the married Chinese executive been set up? And by whom? Who stood to gain?

Warner Breslow sure did.

With Cheng Mie Pharmaceutical out of the picture, Allemezia’s stock took a major nosedive, leaving the company desperate for a new suitor. That’s when Breslow swooped in and bought them for a billion euros less than what Cheng Mie had offered. Talk about a discount.

But that’s not why I’d remembered all this, why I went online to reread all the articles.

It was the aftermath.

One day after the news broke that Breslow had bought Allemezia, Li, star of the video, hanged himself in his office. He was discovered by his father, Li Kunlun—the chairman of Cheng Mie Pharmaceutical.