Swimsuit Page 5

  “I might be able to help,” I said. “The L.A. Times has clout, even here. And I used to be a cop.”

  “Is that right?” Levon McDaniels’s eyelids were sagging, his voice ragged and raw. He walked like a man who’d just run his feet off in a marathon, but he was suddenly interested in me. He stopped walking and asked me to tell him more.

  “I was with the Portland PD. I was a detective, an investigator. Right now I cover the crime desk for the Times.”

  McDaniels winced at the word “crime,” said, “Okay, Ben. You think you can give us a hand with the police? We’re going out of our minds.”

  I walked with the McDanielses through the cool marble lobby with its high ceilings and ocean views until we found a semisecluded spot overlooking the pool. Palm trees rustled in the island breeze. Wet kids in bathing suits ran past us, laughing, not a care in the world.

  Levon said, “I called the police several times and got a menu. ‘Parking tickets, press one. Night court, press two.’ I had to leave a message. Can you believe that?

  “Barb and I went over to the station for this district. Hours were posted on the door. Monday to Friday, eight to five, Saturday, ten to four. I didn’t know police stations had closing hours. Did you?”

  The look in Levon’s eyes was heartbreaking. His daughter was missing. The police station was closed for business. How could this place look the way it did — vacation heaven — when they were slogging through seven kinds of hell?

  “The police here mostly do traffic work, DWIs, stuff like that,” I said. “Domestic violence, burglary.”

  I thought, but didn’t say, that a few years ago a twenty-five-year-old female tourist was attacked on the Big Island by three local hoods who beat her and raped her and killed her.

  She’d been tall, blond, sweet-looking, not unlike Kim.

  There was another case, more famous, a cheerleader for the University of Illinois who’d fallen off the balcony of her hotel room and died instantly. She’d been partying with a couple of boys who were found not guilty of anything. And there was another girl, a local teenager, who called her friends after a concert on the island, and was never seen again.

  “Your press conference was a good thing. The police will have to take Kim seriously,” I said.

  “If I don’t get a call back, I’m going over there again in the morning,” Levon McDaniels said. “Right now we want to go to the bar, see where Kim was hanging out before she vanished. You’re welcome to join us.”

  Chapter 21

  THE TYPHOON BAR was on the mezzanine floor, open to the trade winds, wonderfully scented by plumeria. Café tables and chairs were lined up at the balustrade, overlooking the pool and beyond, a queue of palm trees down to the sands. To my left was a grand piano, still covered, and there was a long bar behind us. A bartender was setting up, slicing lemon peel, putting out dishes of nuts.

  Barbara spoke. “The night manager told us that Kim was sitting at this table, the one nearest the piano,” Barbara said, tenderly patting the table’s marble surface.

  Then she pointed to an alcove fifteen yards away. “That would be the famous men’s room over there. Where the art director went, to ah, just turn his back for a minute…”

  I imagined the bar as it must have been that night. People drinking. A lot of men. I had plenty of questions. Hundreds of them.

  I was starting to look at this story as if I were still a cop. If this were my case, I’d start with the security tapes. I’d want to see who was in the bar when Kim was there. I’d want to know if anybody had been watching her when she’d gotten up from this table, and who might have paid the check after she left.

  Had Kim departed with someone? Maybe gone to his room?

  Or had she walked to the lobby, eyes following her as she made her way down the stairs, her blond hair swinging.

  What then? Had she walked outside, past the pool and the cabanas? Had any of those cabanas been occupied late that night? Had someone followed her out to the beach?

  Levon carefully polished his glasses, one lens, then the other, and held them out to see if he’d done a good job. When he put them back on, he saw me looking out at the covered walkway beyond the pool area that led to the beach.

  “What do you think, Ben?”

  “All of the beaches in Hawaii are public property, so there won’t be any video surveillance out there.”

  I was wondering if the simplest explanation fit. Had Kim gone for a swim? Had she waded out into the water and gotten sucked under by a wave? Had someone found her shoes on the beach and taken them?

  “What can we tell you about Kim?” Barbara asked me.

  “I want to know everything,” I said. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to tape our conversation.”

  Barbara nodded, and Levon ordered G and Ts for them both. I was working, so I declined alcohol, asked for club soda instead.

  I had already started shaping the Kim McDaniels story in my mind, thinking about this beautiful girl from the heartland, with brains and beauty, on the verge of national fame, and about how she had come to one of the most beautiful spots on earth and disappeared without trace or reason. An exclusive with the McDanielses was more than I’d hoped for, and while I still couldn’t know if Kim’s story was a book, it was definitely a journalistic whopper.

  And more than that, I’d been won over by the McDanielses. They were nice people.

  I wanted to help them, and I would.

  Right now, they were exhausted, but they weren’t leaving the table. The interview was on.

  My tape recorder was new, the tape just unwrapped and the batteries fresh. I pushed Record, but, as the machine whirred softly on the table, Barbara McDaniels surprised me.

  It was she who started asking questions.

  Chapter 22

  BARBARA RESTED her chin on her hands, and asked, “What happened with you and the Portland police department — and please don’t tell me what it says in your book jacket bio. That’s just PR, isn’t it?”

  Barbara let me know by her focus and determination that if I didn’t answer her questions, she had no reason to answer mine. I wanted to cooperate because I thought she was right to check me out, and I wanted the McDanielses to trust me.

  I smiled at Barbara’s direct interrogatory style, but there was nothing amusing about the story she was asking me to tell. Once I sent my mind back to that place and time, the memories rolled in, unstoppable, none of them glorifying, none of them very pleasant, either.

  As the still-vivid images flashed on the wide screen inside my head, I told the McDanielses about a fatal car wreck that had happened many years ago; that my partner, Dennis Carbone, and I had been nearby and had responded to the call.

  “When we got to the scene, there was about a half hour left of daylight. It was gloomy with a drizzling rain, but there was enough light to see that a vehicle had skidded off the road. It had caromed off some trees like a two-ton eight ball, crashing out of control through the woods.

  “I radioed for help,” I said now. “Then I was the one who stayed behind to interview the witness who’d been driving the other car — while my partner went to the crashed vehicle to see if there were survivors.”

  I told the McDanielses that the witness had been driving the car coming from the opposite direction, that the other vehicle, a black Toyota pickup, had been in his lane, coming at him fast. He said that he’d swerved, and so had the Toyota. The witness was shaken as he described how the pickup had left the road at high speed, said that he’d braked — and I could see and smell the hundred yards of rubber he’d left on the asphalt.

  “Response and rescue vehicles showed up,” I said. “The paramedics pulled the body out of the pickup, told me that the driver had been killed on impact with a spruce tree and that he’d had no passengers.

  “As the dead man was taken away, I looked for my partner. He was a few yards off the roadside, and I caught him sneaking a look in my direction. A little odd, like he was trying not to be see
n doing something.”

  There was a sudden flurry of girlish laughter as a bride, surrounded by her maids of honor, passed through the bar to the lounge. The bride was a pretty blonde in her twenties. Happiest day of her life, right?

  Barbara turned to see the bridal party, then turned back to look at me. Anyone with eyes could see what she was feeling. And what she was hoping.

  “Go on, Ben,” she said. “You were talking about your partner with the guilty look.”

  I nodded, told her that I turned away from my partner because someone called my name and that when I looked back again, he was closing the trunk of our car.

  “I didn’t ask Dennis what he was doing, because I was already thinking ahead. We had reports to write up, work to do. We had to start with identifying the deceased.

  “I was doing all the right stuff, Barbara,” I told her now. “I think it’s pretty common to block out things we don’t want to see. I should have confronted my partner right then and right there. But I didn’t do it. Turns out that that sneaky, half-seen moment changed my life.”

  Chapter 23

  A WAITRESS CAME OVER and asked if we wanted to refresh our drinks, and I was glad to see her. My throat was closing up and I needed to take a break. I’d told this story before, but it’s never easy to get past disgrace.

  Especially when you didn’t earn it.

  Levon said, “I know this is hard, Ben. But we appreciate your telling us about yourself. It’s important to hear.”

  “This is where it gets hard,” I told Levon.

  He nodded, and even though Levon probably had only ten years on me, I felt his fatherly concern.

  My second club soda arrived and I stirred at it with a straw. Then I went on.

  “A few days passed. The accident victim turned out to be a small-time drug dealer, Robby Snow, and his blood came back positive for heroin. And now his girlfriend called on us. Carrie Willis was her name. Carrie was crushed by Robby’s death, but something else was bothering her. She asked me, ‘What happened to Robby’s backpack? It was red with silver reflecting tape on the back. There was a lot of money in there.’

  “Well, we hadn’t found any red backpack, and there were a lot of jokes about Carrie Willis having the nerve to report stolen drug money to the police.

  “But Robby’s girlfriend was convincing. Carrie didn’t know that Robby was a dealer. She just knew that he was buying a piece of acreage by a creek and he was going to build a house there for the two of them. The bank papers and the full payment for the property — a hundred thousand dollars — were in that backpack because he was on his way to the closing. She put all that money in the backpack herself. Her story checked out.”

  “So you asked your partner about the backpack?” Barbara prompted.

  “Sure. I asked him. And he said, ‘Well, I sure as hell didn’t see a backpack, red or green or sky blue pink.’

  “So, at my insistence, we went to the impound, took the car apart, found nothing. Then we drove in broad daylight out to the woods where the accident happened and we searched the area. At least I did. I thought Denny was just rustling branches and kicking piles of leaves. That’s when I remembered his face getting foxy the night of the accident.

  “I had a long, hard talk with myself that night. The next day I went to my lieutenant for an off-the-record chat. I told him what I suspected, that a hundred thousand dollars in cash might have left the scene and was never reported.”

  Levon said, “Well, you had no choice.”

  “Denny Carbone was an old pit bull of a cop, and I knew if he learned about my conversation with the lieutenant he’d come at me. So I took a chance with my boss, and the next day Internal Affairs was in the locker room. Guess what they found in my locker?”

  “A red backpack,” said Levon.

  I gave him a thumbs-up. “Red backpack, silver reflecting tape, bank papers, heroin, and ten thousand dollars in cash.”

  “Oh, my God,” said Barbara.

  “I was given a choice. Resign. Or there would be a trial. My trial. I knew that I wasn’t going to win in court. It would be ‘he said/he said,’ and the evidence, some of it, anyway, had been found in my locker. Worse, I suspected that I was getting hung with this because my lieutenant was in on it with Denny Carbone.

  “A very bad day, blew up a lot of illusions for me. I turned in my badge, my gun, and some of my self-respect. I could’ve fought, but I couldn’t take a chance I’d go to jail for something I hadn’t done.”

  “That’s a sad story, Ben,” said Levon.

  “Yep. And you know how the story turns out. I moved to L.A. Got a job at the Times. And I wrote some books.” “You’re being modest,” Barbara said, and patted my arm. “Writing is what I do, but it’s not who I am.”

  “And who would you say you are?” she asked.

  “Right now, I’m working at being the best reporter I can be. I came to Maui to tell your daughter’s story, and, at the same time, I want you to have that happy ending. I want to see it, report it, be here for all the good feelings when Kim comes back safe. That’s who I am.”

  Barbara said, “We believe you, Ben.” And Levon nodded at her side.

  Like I said, Nice people.

  Chapter 24

  AMSTERDAM. Five twenty in the afternoon. Jan Van der Heuvel was in his office on the fifth floor of the classic, neck-gabled house, gazing out over the treetops at the sightseeing boat on the canal, waiting for time to pass.

  The door to his office opened, and Mieke, a pretty girl of twenty with short, dark hair, entered. She wore a small skirt and a fitted jacket, her long legs bare to her little lace-up boots. The girl lowered her eyes, said that if he didn’t need her for anything she would leave for the day.

  “Have a good evening,” Van der Heuvel said.

  He walked her to the office door and locked it behind her, returned to his seat at the long drawing table, and looked down at the street running along the Keizersgracht Canal until he saw Mieke get into her fiancé’s Renault and speed away.

  Only then did Van der Heuvel attend to his computer. The teleconference wasn’t for another forty minutes, but he wanted to establish contact early so that he could record the proceedings. He tapped keys until he made the connection and his friend’s face came on the screen.

  “Horst,” he said. “I am here.”

  At that same time, a brunette woman of forty was on the bridge of her 118-foot yacht anchored in the Mediterranean off the coast of Portofino. The yacht was custom-made, constructed of high-tensile aluminum with six cabins, a master suite, and a video conference center in the saloon, which easily converted to a cinema.

  The woman left her young captain and took the stairs down to her suite, where she removed a Versace jacket from the closet and slipped it on over her halter top. Then she crossed the galleyway to the media room and booted up her computer. When the connection was made to the encrypted line, she smiled into the webcam.

  “Gina Prazzi checking in, Horst. How are we today?”

  Four time zones away, in Dubai, a tall bearded man wearing traditional Middle Eastern clothing passed a mosque and hurried to a hole-in-the-wall restaurant down the street. He greeted the proprietor and continued on through the kitchen, aromatic with garlic and rosemary.

  Pushing aside a heavy curtain, he took the stairs down to the basement level and unlocked a heavy wooden door leading to a private room.

  In Hong Kong’s Victoria Peak section, a young chemist flicked on his computer. He was in his twenties with an IQ in the high 170s. As the software loaded, he looked through his curtains, down the long slope, past the tops of the cylindrical high-rises, and farther below to the brightly lit towers of Hong Kong. It was unusually clear for this time of year, and his gaze had drifted to Victoria Harbour and beyond, to the lights of Kowloon, when the computer signaled and he turned his attention to the emergency meeting of the Alliance.

  In São Paulo, Raphael dos Santos, a man of fifty, drove to his home at just past
three in his new Wiesmann GT MF5 sports coupe. The car cost 250,000 U.S. dollars and went from zero to sixty in under four seconds with a top speed of 193 miles per hour. Rafi, as he was called, loved this car.

  He braked at the entrance to the underground garage, tossed the keys to Tomás, and took the elevator that opened inside his apartment.

  There he crossed several thousand square feet of Jatoba hardwood floors, passed ultramodern furnishings, and entered his home office with its view of the gleaming facade of the Renaissance Hotel on Alameda Santos.

  Rafi pressed a button on his desk, and a thin screen rose vertically up through the center. He wondered again at the purpose of this meeting. Something had gone wrong. But what? He touched the keyboard and pressed his thumb to the ID pad.

  Rafi greeted the leader of the Alliance in Portuguese. “Horst, you old bastard. Make this good. You have our undivided attention!”

  Chapter 25

  IN THE SWISS ALPS, Horst Werner sat in the upholstered chair in his library. Flames leapt in the fireplace and pin lights illuminated the eight-foot-long scale model of the Bismarck he had made himself. There were bookshelves on every wall but no windows, and behind the cherrywood paneling was a three-inch-thick wall of lead-lined steel.

  Horst’s safe room was linked to the world by sophisticated Internet circuitry, giving him the feeling that this chamber was the very center of the universe.

  The dozen members of the Alliance had all signed on to the encrypted network. They all spoke English to greater and lesser degrees, their live pictures on his screen. After greeting them, Horst moved quickly to the point of the meeting.

  “An American friend has sent Jan a film as an amusement. I am very interested in your reaction.”

  A white light filled twelve linked computer screens and then clarified as the camera focused on a Jacuzzi-style tub. Inside the tub was a dark-skinned young girl, nude with long black hair, lying on her stomach in about four inches of water. She was tied up in the way that Americans quaintly call “hog-tied,” her hands and feet behind her with a rope that also passed around her throat.