Shark and Octopus Read online

  “I’m Shebana Mehta.” She held the handshake a suggestively long time.

  “I’m Bobby Lowell, Saif’s friend since high school. Is that a Boston accent I’m hearing?”

  ”You’ve got a good ear there.”

  “I’m an actor,” Bobby replied. After kissing her hand, in a French accent he said, “Such a pleasure, Madame Mehta.”

  “Bobby,” Saif demanded, “the food table.”

  “What about it?”

  “We need to go there.”

  “We do?”

  “We do.”

  The five of them went to the food table, where Griffin speared and ingested a Bombay potato so spicy he felt beads of sweat form on his nose.

  “You really should try your mother’s cooking,” Griffin said. “It’s outstanding.”

  Saif refused to be distracted. “I want to switch.”

  As innocently as he could manage, Bobby asked, “Switch? Switch what?”

  “You know switch what.”

  “Why are you venting, Saif? Ah. You want my date? Shabana-”

  “Mehta. Yes.”

  “What do you know about Ms. Mehta? Age?”

  “Thirty six.”

  “So, an older woman.”

  “She’s divorced and as you can see, she’s ah-”

  “She’s what exactly?” Bobby wondered.

  “Well, she’s … she’s killer. Just look at her.”

  They all scoped her out. Kit’s jaw hung open. Shabana Mehta wore maroon colored slacks and a tight, midnight blue silk blouse. She sensed their glances and reacted by running a hand through her black hair, arching her chest in the process.

  “And your date?” Griffin asked.

  “Shantoo Joshi. Been in this country four years. Her spoken English is so-so. My Mom’s told me several times she got a perfect 800 score on her med school achievement test.”

  “While you scored a mere 780 on the Graduate Record Exam, as I recall. Are you threatened by her perfection?”

  “Griffin, she has a mustache.”

  Griffin looked in Miss Joshi’s direction, who spotted him and resumed her downward glance.

  “Well, yes, she does. But honestly, Saif, it’s hardly visible from here across the room.”

  ”I want to switch.”

  “Sure thing,” Bobby said, waving to Mrs. Venkatesan, who looked on with concern from the other side of the living room. “You take the gay divorcee. I get the future doctor with a mustache. Go ahead, break your poor mother’s heart.” Bobby waved again at Mrs. Venkatesan. “Want me to call your Mom over here? Right now?”

  “My date is not my style.”

  “No,” Griffin said, taking over the lecture from Bobby. “I don’t think she is either. But that’s no reason you cannot march yourself back over there and talk to her. Make your mother smile. We’ll be your wingmen. We’ll keep Ms. Mehta occupied, give you the chance to move in for the kill.”

  “Okay, I’ll talk to her. But there won’t be any killing tonight. Any other words of inspiration?”

  Griffin speared another Bombay potato. “You really should try these.”

  Forty five minutes later Griffin told Saif they’d be leaving.

  “Give me five minutes,” he replied. “I’ll meet you at your car.”

  Saif arrived carrying an envelope, which he handed to Griffin. “You asked me to find whatever scholarly articles I could on Alexandra Webb and Deborah Miller.”

  “She pronounces her name De-BOR-ah,” Griffin corrected.

  “There’s a good bit by her in there. I couldn’t find anything written by Alexandra Webb other than the expected stuff for Future-Ride. Some of De-BOR-ah Miller’s writing is pretty technical. Lots of equations and variables. She’s smart, no denying that. But … Call me if you need anything explained.”

  *

  June 12

  9:15 am

  “Couldn’t sleep last night after Saif’s party,” Griffin told Kit, the next morning on the front porch. Griffin’s voice had the rawness of exhaustion. After the Venkatesans’ party, sometime around three in the morning, he gave up on sleep and hunkered down with his computer. “Since I couldn’t sleep anyway, I went online to check out Future-Ride, Alexandra Webb, and De-BOR-ah Miller.”

  “Learn anything?”

  “As I already knew, Future-Ride is clearly a bona fide company. It’s listed in Dun & Bradstreet, Hoover’s Online, Factiva, and elsewhere. Founded early Nineties. The company’s fine, of that I’m sure, but what about the women who run it? Neither Alexandra Webb nor De-BOR-ah Miller turned up in the WATCH database for criminal records.

  “From People Tracker I learned Alexandra Webb was born in Augusta, Georgia. Nothing phony about that lovely accent. She was educated at the Sorbonne. She’s been with Future-Ride since finishing her graduate degree. I couldn’t track down anything she’s published.

  “De-BOR-ah Miller was educated at Stanford and has been with Future-Ride two and a half years. She’s authored a pair of articles for scholarly economics publications. Which I duly tracked down and read. I read the two articles Saif supplied as well. Tried to, at least. I’ll admit that a good bit of her writing is statistical ebonics to me, but I figured enough out to know the woman is a total shark. Unburdened by a social conscience of any kind. She’s obviously bright. But – BTW, do you know what a Dead Cat Bounce is?”

  “No clue,” Kit responded. “Should I?”

  “It’s a Wall Street expression. When a company tanks and its stock drops to near zero, venture capitalists buy up the stock. That gives the company a brief bounce, as if still alive. Happened to Enron. Investors make money, even though the company is now nothing more than a body laid out in the morgue of capitalism. De-BOR-ah Miller thinks that’s fine. She worships the free market.”

  Griffin closed his eyes, felt the morning sun grab his face.

  “You learn anything?” he asked Kit, in a croaky voice. “When you and Annie went to see the security guard at Oakecrest Village.”

  “We may have.” Kit wore another Hawaiian shirt. This one showed five sea gulls landing on a beach. “Or maybe not. This comes from the guard who talked to the guy who may have stolen the car.”

  “The whiskey and Aqua Velva man.”

  “Him, yeah. The guard’s name is Rockefeller. You don’t expect a security guard to have that name, but he does. The guard told us a detail that didn’t make it into the newspaper article.”

  Eyes still closed, Griffin asked. “And the other detail is?”

  “Griffin, he said ‘Crappola.’”

  Griffin opened his eyes. “Crappola?” he repeated, laughing. “Who said crappola? The security guard named Rockefeller?”

  Kit elaborated: “No, the guy who probably stole the car from Oakecrest. The guy you probably saw drive away from the museum? The security guard overheard him say, ‘What is this crappola?’ He was talking to the cab driver who dropped him off at Oakecrest. The driver couldn’t change a twenty.”

  “Then he’s got to be local talent hired for the job,” Griffin concluded. “Not somebody the man in white sent over from Spain to steal a car and be his driver. You ever hear anyone outside of Baltimore say ‘Crappola’?”

  “Nope.”

  “Me neither,” said Annie, pushing through the front screen door, carrying a tray with a pitcher of orange juice and three glasses. Her earrings shimmered in the morning sun.

  She poured the orange juice into the glasses. Before Griffin took his first sip his attention was pulled to a car turning onto their street. It was a limo, so relentlessly polished the black gleamed in the sun. The three of them watched from the porch, orange juice unsipped, until the limo stopped in front of the house.

  “Got to be the Duke,” Griffin said.

  “Did you ask him here?”

  “Absolutely not, Annie. He has our address, but why is he here and not off doing whatever it is dukes do all day? I’m not sure I’m in the mood for his ad nauseum lectures on the ancestral wine
today.”

  “Heavy on the nauseum,” Annie said.

  “Let me get something from inside the house to show the Duke.” Griffin looked at Annie and Kit and told them, “Everybody grab their glasses, so they don’t go flying.”

  *

  Half a minute later Griffin was back on the porch. He held the picture Grace had sent him of the man in white making his way through Arazzo Castle. Griffin watched Duke Ferlinghetti climb out of the limo’s back seat. He wore black slacks and shirt, the slacks the most heavily starched Griffin’d ever seen. Those slacks could have stood on their own and walked away if they wanted. In the seat vacated by the Duke, a pair of long, attractive woman’s legs were visible.

  “Kit,” said Annie. “The chauffeur and whoever’s in the limo are probably hot. Why don’t I take a glass of orange juice to the chauffeur and you can-”

  “Sweet!” Kit yelled, stumping down the steps, orange juice sloshing out his glass on his way to the woman in the limo.

  “Sure you got game enough, Kit?” Griffin taunted from the porch.

  To Griffin, Kit called back, “Watch and learn, my friend.”

  “Mr. Gilmore,” the Duke said, from the street next to his limo. Shimmering waves of heat snaked skyward around him. “I believe someone in your government has stressed to you the importance in recovering my family’s key?”

  “She has,” Griffin agreed.

  As the Duke approached, he spoke with troubling softness. Was this the calm before the storm?

  “She has explained that my consistent support of American policies in Europe might weaken if the key is not returned?”

  “She has. She has also given me this. This is a picture of the man who stole your family’s key. The picture’s from a surveillance tape. The man also threatened to kill me, if that’s of concern to you.” Duke Ferlinghetti did not respond. Which told Griffin that, no, the Duke was not overly concerned with that possibility. “Do you recognize this man?”

  Griffin walked down the steps at a somewhat slower pace than Kit had. He met the Duke on the sidewalk and handed Duke Ferlinghetti the picture of the man in white.

  Griffin was surprised to see how old the Duke appeared in the morning light. He was 33, a year younger than Griffin, but seemed a decade older. The Duke’s royal bald spot was grapefruit-sized and spreading.

  “Do you know that man?”

  The Duke took off his South American dictator shades. His brown eyes were surprisingly small and lifeless. He stared at the picture a long time. Griffin saw beads of sweat forming on the man’s temples. Money out the ying yang, Griffin thought, and it doesn’t prepare him for just another muggy Baltimore morning.

  Griffin heard Annie speaking to the chauffeur about the weather. What Kit was chatting about to the blonde in the limo, Griffin could guess. The fact that she’d be eight-ten inches taller than Kit would not trouble him in the slightest. The Duke kept staring at the picture, a hardening look creeping into his eyes.

  “No,” he said at last. “I am quite certain. I have never seen this man before in my life.”

  “Based on his accent, I believe he is from your part of the world. Although Spanish, not Italian. Could he have some personal grudge against you?”

  “No. I tell you I have never seen him before.”

  “Could his family have some sort of grudge against yours?”

  “Not a chance,” the Duke answered with certainty.” I would recognize him in that case.”

  “He has some connection to a company in New York named Future-Ride. Future-Ride is an investment firm.”

  “I have never heard of them.”

  “So you have no idea what the connection between this man and Future-Ride could be.”

  Wearily, the Duke responded. “I have no idea whatsoever.”

  “Do you have any idea why he would take the least valuable of the twelve keys in the museum display?”

  “That is a question for you to answer, Mr. Gilmore.”

  “He used the key to open the room at the back of the dungeon of your family’s castle in Arazzo.”

  “Impossible!” came the reply. It was as if Griffin had suggested repealing the law of gravity. “I have known of that room all my life. The door has not been opened in my lifetime. I do not believe the door can be opened.”

  ”Nevertheless, on Saturday it was opened, by this man.” Griffin touched the picture. “With your family’s key. The key he stole from me at the museum fundraiser. The key is everything to you, I understand that, but to this man the key was just a way to get into that room. The room turned out to be empty. This man,” he touched the picture once more, “thought something would be there. Something worth an enormous amount of effort on his part. Have you any idea what that something could be?”

  The Duke gave the question some thought. Griffin watched beads of sweat work their way down the sides of his face. Duke Ferlinghetti refused to acknowledge what must have been uncomfortable. It was a sort of aristocratic discipline that Griffin found unexpectedly sympathetic.

  “I can’t imagine what he thought could be in there,” the Duke said at last. “The room has not been opened in my lifetime. What could he possibly have thought would be in that room?”

  “I have no idea,” Griffin admitted. He glanced around, looking for objects that might go airborne should the Duke’s temper explode. That, Griffin saw, was not about to happen. Griffin understood the Duke had stopped by that morning with a believing in Santa Clause kind of hope the key might be miraculously recovered. But no miracles were on the morning’s agenda.

  The Duke turned dejectedly and headed back toward the limo in the slow shuffle of a child sent to bed without dessert.

  It had never occurred to Griffin that he could feel sorry for Duke Ferlinghetti.

  Griffin called out, “Hey, Larry!” Referring to the Duke by his first name was probably punishable by death or at least dismemberment, but Griffin did so again. “Larry?”

  The Duke turned and slowly raised his head to meet Griffin’s glance.

  “We’ll get your key back,” Griffin promised.

  ELEVEN

  June 12

  5:00 pm

  At five that afternoon Griffin was awakened from a nap by Annie handing him his phone.

  “It’s Grace,” she said.

  Their bedroom was the only air conditioned room in the house. They had bought the AC unit used, and while it did its cooling job well enough, the unit gave off a steady series of chunka, chunka, thunk, chunka, chunka, thunk sounds. Griffin found the noise oddly relaxing.

  Never one to bounce out of bed, he had some trouble waking from the nap.

  “It’s Grace on the phone,” Annie elaborated, placing the phone against his right cheek.

  “Yarp?” Griffin managed.

  “Mr. Gilmore?”

  “You’re Grace.”

  “Yes. I am,” she responded, with some patience. “I have information for you.”

  “Information?”

  “Yes, Mr. Gilmore. We subpoenaed the phone records of the three lines at Future-Ride of interest to you – Alexandra Webb, Deborah Miller, and the line in a small alcove between their offices. I would have produced this earlier, but my boss had me deal with developments in the Middle East.” “Your boss?” Griffin said, almost awake now. “And how is Bernie? He remember me fondly from December?”

  “He remembers you. Fondly is not the word I would use.”

  “Wait. You have phone records?” By now Griffin was completely awake.

  “Yes.”

  “This means you know the phone number of the man in white when he called the alcove phone at Future-Ride. He called from Arazzo Castle on Saturday.”

  “We do.”

  “If you know his phone number, do you know his name? You know the man in white’s name?”

  “Unfortunately, no. We now know the phone was purchased in Madrid, Spain in March. Paid for in cash. Therefore, no record generated. I can’t believe it would make any diffe
rence. He’d hardly sign his own name.”

  “Can you send me the phone records anyway?”

  “They’re on their way to your house by Fed Ex.”

  “The Fed Ex is due when?”

  Annie held up a Fed Ex package. “Just arrived,” she said.

  Griffin gestured for her to open the package.

  “There’s something else in the package that may be of interest to you, Mr. Gilmore,” Grace went on. “We arranged the phone numbers by frequency of calls made. The package has the complete list, all calls made on all three lines for the past three years. It’s a lengthy list.” That the anal retentive Grace had been so meticulous was no surprise to Griffin. She went on, “Just about all the calls by Alexandra Webb and Deborah Miller are to banks and mortgage lenders, investor clients. The kinds of calls you’d expect Future-Ride executives to make.”

  Griffin was awake enough to note a certain Here’s-What-You-Don’t Know tone working its way back into Grace’s voice.

  “But, Mr. Gilmore? That other line, the one not belonging to either woman, is of far more interest. What do you know about that third line?”

  “It’s in an alcove. Other than that, nothing at all.”

  “As you say, that third line is in an alcove. The blueprint for the Future-Ride offices is included in the Fed Ex package. Officially, this alcove phone is for the use of clients, who need privacy to make calls they don’t want overheard by the folks at Future-Ride.

  “Let’s say somebody needs to check with a banker or fellow investors without prying ears overhearing. Just close the door to the alcove and you’ve got the privacy you desire. It’s not unusual for law firms to have alcove phones like that. Investment firms like Future-Ride have them too.”

  “Sure,” Griffin said, understanding the reason for the alcove phone. “Everything you say makes sense.”

  “I’m almost to the part that doesn’t. There’s one number called from this phone that’s very unexpected.”