Mission Canyon (27 page)

His eyes held mine. He could see I meant it, knew I had evaluated the evidence or I wouldn’t have said it. His chest rose and fell, and a look infiltrated his face, a look of physical pain.

He leaned on his arms. ‘‘Why?’’

‘‘I don’t know. It came from Mickey Yago, and he insisted that the crash had nothing to do with Isaac.
Nada
.’’

It was sinking in, but not making sense. ‘‘But I don’t know Franklin Brand.’’

‘‘Think. It’s something you know, or saw, or did. Something to do with Brand or Mako. Anything connected with the company, even tangentially.’’

His blue eyes clouded. He looked as though he couldn’t breathe.

‘‘What is it?’’ I touched his face.

‘‘No, it’s nothing.’’

‘‘Tell me. Try to remember. What was going on with you before the crash? Things you did with Isaac, with work . . .’’

‘‘It’s nothing.’’

His shoulders were tight, his eyes focusing on walls, furniture, anything but me. Whatever he had remembered, he didn’t want to tell me.

‘‘Jesse, Yago hinted that it’s something that could send you to prison.’’

‘‘But I haven’t done anything that could send me to prison. Christ, Evan, don’t you believe me?’’

I kept myself calm. ‘‘Of course I do. But, Jesse, Mickey Yago screwed with me today.’’

I told him about LAX, about Yago’s demand that Jesse launder funds for i-heist, and the new deadline. When I said ‘‘a million dollars,’’ his neck colored. He seemed to shrink.

‘‘He said you need to play ball or you’ll pay—with your friends and with me. Today was meant to be a taste of that.’’

‘‘Oh, God.’’

‘‘So stop being evasive and tell me whatever the hell it is that you’re trying to keep me from knowing.’’

‘‘I . . .’’ He swallowed and shook his head.

‘‘I repeat. Yago said
your friends
will pay.’’

I looked pointedly out the window, at Adam leaning back in a chair at the patio table, running his index finger around the rim of his wineglass.

For a moment Jesse said nothing, then, ‘‘Jesus. I have to tell him.’’

I put a hand on his shoulder. ‘‘You’re making me nervous. Not to mention pissed off. What’s going on with you?’’

Wordlessly he pivoted and headed out the back door.

‘‘Adam,’’ he said.

‘‘No. Tell me that’s not true.’’

Adam hunched over the table, fingertips on his temples, deadly still. Jesse’s hand rested on his back.

‘‘Why would Brand want you dead?’’ Adam said.

‘‘I don’t know.’’

Adam looked at him as though he were a stranger. ‘‘You must.’’

‘‘Truly, I don’t.’’

‘‘You’re telling me that Brand set out to kill you, but missed and killed Isaac by mistake. And you have no idea what led to this?’’

‘‘Not right now, but—’’

‘‘I find that inconceivable.’’

He stood up, shying away from Jesse’s hand.

He looked at me. ‘‘This man Yago didn’t tell you why? You didn’t insist?’’

‘‘He refused,’’ I said.

He pressed the heels of his palms against his head.

I feared what I was seeing in him. He was undergoing an emotional polarity reversal. Three years of sympathy were blowing away, a new anger coalescing, a new confusion aging his face. He looked at Jesse, disconsolate, his lips trying to form words and failing. His eyes said it:
Your fault
.

Jesse said, ‘‘I swear to God—’’

Adam held up his hands. ‘‘I can’t talk right now. Could you just go?"

The sun reflected in Jesse’s eyes. I saw hurt and helplessness.

‘‘All right,’’ he said.

He got up, moving heavily, and headed into the house. I watched Adam. I wanted him to say something, anything. He stared at the ocean as though spellbound.

I said, ‘‘There are people who want to hurt Jesse. These extortionists, i-heist, are threatening to get to him through you and me.’’

No response. I felt my own anger kindling. No matter how dazed or grief-stricken Adam felt, he shouldn’t take it out on Jesse this way.

He stared at the sun. ‘‘You know about entropy?’’

It couldn’t be a nonsequitur. With Adam, all thoughts connected.

I said, ‘‘The second law of thermodynamics.’’

‘‘It’s a measure of disorder in a closed system. It means that chaos always increases.’’ He put a hand over his eyes. ‘‘Go, please.’’

I was halfway to the rental car when I heard the patio table crash, plates smashing, the wine bottle breaking.

Cautiously I pushed open the French doors at my house. With relief I saw that the living room was intact, everything where I’d left it. Whoever drugged me, they didn’t do it for the chance to burglarize the place while I was wrecked. I grabbed some clean clothes and headed over to Jesse’s place. I didn’t want him to be alone.

When I walked into his house, he had the TV on. ‘‘You hit the big time. FOX News. Terminal evacuation after a passenger reported seeing a woman with a knife. No photos, but i-heist will make sure the feds know it was you. If they want them to find you, that is.’’

I stared at the screen. ‘‘Very expensive game they’re playing.’’

‘‘They don’t care about the expense. They care about demonstrating their power.’’

The sun hit his face. His expression was desolate. I went and put my arms around him.

‘‘I’m sorry,’’ I said.

He held on to me. I stroked his hair. Gold light infiltrated the room, strangely sterile for a summer sunset.

Finally he straightened. ‘‘You look whipped.’’

He was being polite; I smelled like it, too.

I let go of him. ‘‘Let me shower and we’ll talk.’’

‘‘Sure. I’ll call Lieutenant Rome and give him the revised edition. He’ll love me for it.’’

Ten minutes under hot water washed away chocolate and sweat, jalapeño popper grease and any drug metabolites emanating from my skin. But none of my anxieties. I dressed and went back to the living room. Jesse was sitting at the kitchen table, staring at the sea. It was flat, with a pewter shine.

‘‘I heard your phone message, the Segue information.’’ He rubbed his leg, as though it ached. ‘‘I have to tell Lavonne. Yago demanding that I move money through the Sanchez Marks client trust account—that’s a threat against the firm. Maybe she can talk to the FBI about this, I don’t know. . . .’’

The FBI. My brain, which had been moving all day with the torpor of a salted slug, finally sat up. I remembered what Cousin Taylor had said at the bridal shower.

‘‘Dale Van Heusen is with the FBI’s money-laundering unit.’’

‘‘Damn.’’ He looked at me. ‘‘He’s been angling at i-heist all along. He must suspect that they’ve been moving money through Mako.’’

‘‘And he thinks that you and Isaac were part of their laundering operation from way back. That’s why he thinks he can threaten you with seizure of your assets.’’

And it came back to me, Van Heusen’s seemingly nonsensical remark.

‘‘Smurfing,’’ I said.

‘‘What about it?’’

His computer was open on the table. I sat down and logged on to Google.

I said, ‘‘Van Heusen used that term. Clearly he wanted to pique our interest.’’

‘‘But it’s a denial-of-service attack.’’

‘‘And it’s a blue cartoon character. Maybe it’s something else as well.’’

I typed in a search request:
smurfing
+
money laundering
. It was the most basic way I could think of to come up with a connection, maybe the connection I was missing. Let the search engine do the work.

The results popped up in less than a second. I heard Jesse groan out a breath. This was it.

From the Royal Canadian Mounted Police:
Smurfing is possibly the most commonly used money-laundering method. It involves many individuals who deposit cash or buy bank drafts in amounts under $10,000.

From the U.S. Department of Justice:
The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network defines smurfing as a money-laundering technique in which the launderer divides large cash deposits into smaller amounts and attempts thereby to avoid CTR reporting requirements.

‘‘CTR?’’ I said.

‘‘Currency Transaction Reports. Banks have to file them whenever a customer deposits ten thousand or more dollars in cash.’’

He came close to the computer and clicked on another search hit.

I looked at him. ‘‘So what’s the implication here? Does Van Heusen think you’re a smurf?’’

He stared at the screen. ‘‘Maybe.’’

I couldn’t tell if he was petrified or unconcerned. He looked frozen.

‘‘Maybe?’’ I said. ‘‘Maybe the FBI thinks you launder dirty money for a hacker gang?’’

‘‘I don’t know.’’

‘‘The month before the crash. That whole summer. What was going on? Think.’’

‘‘Evan, thinking about this is all I do.’’

‘‘But back to that summer.’’

He closed his eyes. ‘‘Can we let this rest? I don’t mean to be a jerk. I’m just fried.’’

He pushed himself up to his feet and made his way into the kitchen for a drink. I watched him, thinking, Spoil the fun. . . . Brand had nearly killed him, left him so badly hurt that he’d never be able to get a drink of water without planning ahead how to balance himself at the sink, and Yago was playing the jolly jokester about it all.

Shoot. Yago had sent a message from LAX.
To you, babe. You’ll enjoy it
. Turning back to the computer, I logged on to my e-mail account.

Cyberwar? It has nothing on the power of words to break the heart. I opened Yago’s message, and things fell apart.

Jesse has been a busy boy.

There were photos. I had to scroll down to see them. One at a time.

We warned him. We told him he should behave. He is a bad boy.

At first I thought it was another archive photo. They were available online through the
News-Press
,
Sports Illustrated
, or
Swimming World
. Jesse’s face was younger, and he was standing up, tan and shirtless, and as I scrolled down I saw palm trees and a bright blue pool in the background. And the picture kept scrolling.

He turned around at the sink. ‘‘No.’’

The photo scrolled, and I saw that he was standing in front of a woman who was stretched out on a chaise. His hands were on her shoulders. Her hands were on his swimsuit, fingers curling beneath the waistband, pulling it down, no question about it.

For a moment I thought this was another doctored picture, like the phony stag-night shot. But Jesse clattered to sit down next to me and reached for the keyboard.

‘‘Ev, stop, don’t,’’ he said.

I pushed his hand aside.

The woman in the photo had her back to the camera, and now that I looked at it, the photo was taken with a telephoto lens, a long shot into a private garden, where they thought they were unobserved. Scrolling, seeing her legs and freckled shoulders, her face obscured. But I couldn’t mistake the hair, all that lustrous silver.

It was Harley.

‘‘Please, Evan, stop,’’ Jesse said.

My skin felt tight, my vision constricted. I felt his hand on my wrist, trying to keep me from scrolling down. I resisted. The next photo, taken a couple of minutes later, clarified things for me.

‘‘Let me explain,’’ he said.

‘‘No, this is self-explanatory, believe me.’’

‘‘I meant to tell you. I should have.’’

I stood up. ‘‘Told me what, that Harley’s bi? Experienced-at-it bi. Athletically, enthusiastically, goddamned wild-for-it bi.’’

I wavered across the room to the doors, where the ocean shone the color of tin. Feeling caged, feeling rage, fighting to keep back tears.

‘‘When?’’ I said. ‘‘How long ago?’’

‘‘It was in college,’’ he said.

And I understood. The rumors, Harley’s hints, even the snide remarks directed at me by Kenny Rudenski: Harley had affairs with students.

Jesse was her student.

I felt an inchoate and inflating sense of jealousy, irrational and unstoppable. This happened before I even met him, and I felt like killing Harley. The liar—all these years telling me she was a lesbian, when she plainly loved a good straight romp. With my fiancé.

‘‘It was a fling,’’ he said. ‘‘I never expected it to come back and haunt me.’’

‘‘Just stop talking,’’ I said.

I went back to the computer. Forcing myself to look at the photos again, I saw that they were dated. Not photostore dated, but with the photographer’s handwriting in white grease pencil.

I felt as if a match had been put to my head. ‘‘The date. The date’s wrong.’’

It was more recent than college. It would have been when he was in law school.

‘‘How long did it go on?’’ I said. ‘‘Where were these photos taken, at UCLA? A fling? You were living in Los Angeles. Who drives a hundred miles for a fling, Jesse?’’

‘‘Evan, don’t make me talk about this.’’

I heard something in his voice I’d never heard before: fear.

‘‘How long?’’ I said.

‘‘Ev, please understand. I know it’s my fault, but I couldn’t bring myself to tell you. And the longer I didn’t tell you, the more I thought it would upset you if you ever knew. I should have told you up front, I know. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.’’

I couldn’t look at him. I stared at the computer screen.

‘‘Don’t look at it anymore. Please delete it,’’ he said.

‘‘Not yet.’’ I hadn’t even scrolled halfway through the message. ‘‘Is this what Mickey Yago has been threatening to reveal?’’

‘‘Yes.’’