The Shadow Box (28 page)

Item:

Something like that seems to be happening. The Cus
toms Service seized thirty-two tons of adulterated, mis
branded, or smuggled animal drugs. The article doesn't
say what was ultimately being done with them. Perhaps the writer didn't wish to give people ideas.

If the DEA's experience is any guide, seizures represent
no more than two percent of the total that actually gets
through. The bad news, therefore, is that another fifteen
hundred tons or so would have actually reached the mar
ket, some of it reformulated for human consumption. The
good news is that these are real drugs. They'll probably
work as well as any.
             

One must learn, thought Doyle, to listen to one's
inner voices.

Veterinary medicine.

That's the business Eagle Sales was in. The business
that Michael's father was in. It's the business that Armin
Rasmussen owned until Big Jake Fallon, baseball bat in
hand, gave him twenty-four hours to leave the country or
have every bone in his body broken. His office and plant
were in flames at the time. And later his home. Moon had
burned them to the ground.

Doyle suddenly remembered something.

In his mind he saw the thick brown envelope that Marty
Hennessy had brought over to his office. In it were the
contents of Jake's pockets on the night he died. It was
still in the office safe.

The contents of his pockets had shed little light at the
time. His billfold had been left intact, cash and credit cards
still there. His keys, watch, and rings as well. The intruder
had taken nothing. All he cared about, thought Hennessy,
was getting away from there.

Jake's notebook was no help either. Doyle had gone through it page by page, with Hennessy, looking for any
hint that Jake might have had cause to look over his shoul
der. There was an entry here and there that might have
raised an eyebrow if a reporter had gotten his hands on
it
...
notes of meetings with certain public figures . . .
but no reference whatever to Lehman-Stone or AdChem.

Also in his pocket, however, was an AdChem annual
report. Doyle hadn't thought much about it because Mi
chael said that Bronwyn had given it to Jake that evening.
She'd been bragging about
Michael and touting AdChem
as a stock to watch.

All things considered, maybe it was worth another look.

Moon?

Could you be right after all?

Could Armin Rasmussen have found his way into
AdChem?

Moon, where the hell have you gone?

Chapter 18

It was a four-car garage. Moon entered it in darkness. He made no sound. The only
light shone down from
the apartment above it. It was enough.

He saw the white BMW. The initials ”BH” were writ
ten on the door in script. An electric golf cart, also white, sat at the far end. It bore the same initials. The remaining
two spaces were empty. The garage, he noted, had its own
supply of gasoline. An electric pump had been mounted
on the wall
nearest the driveway.

As he drew near the stairs that led to the apartment, he
caught the scent of cheap perfume. He tested the stairs.
They were made of wood but had runners of outdoor car
pet. He readied the baseball bat and climbed, praying that
the man had found no companion for this night. There
was no one. The apartment was empty.

An ashtray by the bed held cigarettes with lipstick on
them but these were dry and stale to the touch. The bed
was unmade. It smelled of chlorine from the pool, of
sweat, and of that perfume. The smell of those sheets, for
some reason, made Moon think of Michael. He did not know why. Michael would never use a prostitute.

Moon searched
the apartment. Between the mattress and
box spring of the bed he found two automatic pistols and
a spare clip for each. One was large caliber, the other
small. He examined the small one, a Beretta, .22 caliber.
This, more than the other, was an assassin's weapon. It
was meant for close work, fired into the brain, several
shots, little noise. The sound, if there was anyone to hear
it, would resemble the popping of balloons. He placed
both pistols in his belt and made his way back toward
the pool.

The man was stretched out on a lounge chair. He was
dressed in shorts and a flowered shirt. He lay, legs crossed,
his hands clasped behind his neck, looking up as if en
joying the night sky. Moon had little doubt that this was
the one called Walter. He would like to have been certain
o
f that. But now he could not be. The man was dead.

Moon had not meant to kill him. He realized too late
that he had.

Before he had lifted him into that chair, arranged his body in that pose, Moon had sat astride him, massaging
his heart, trying to bring back a pulse. The only pulse he
felt was his own, throbbing at his temple.

He was disgusted with himself.

The choke hold was meant only to put him to sleep,
give Moon a few minutes to study the security system.
That done, he would have carried this man into the main
house and he would have strapped him to a chair. He
would have waited for him to wake up and see a black
man sitting across from him. See the baseball bat in the
black man's hands.

Moon would not have spoken. There would have been
no need. He would have watched the man's eyes as his
head began to clear. First, he would have looked for recog
nition. And then he would have watched them as they
focused on the polished Louisville Slugger, bought new
that afternoon from a store three towns away. The man's
eyes would have told him the answer he was looking for.

He would have talked. And then he would have died
hard.

But Moon had not been sure of his strength. What the
stroke had sapped of it, all that therapy had restored, but
in different ways and in different muscles. He should have
known that his touch and timing would be off. He had
squeezed just a little too tight and held or five seconds
too long. He had neglected to make sure the man was
breathing before he left him to look for others who might
be there.

Moon placed the Louisville Slugger on the lounge chair
beside the dead man's legs and entered the main house
through a set of French doors. He was reasonably certain
that the alarms had been turned off because he had found the doors ajar and a light on in the kitchen. The man had
left himself access to the liquor supply. Still, he was reluc
tant to explore further. A home such as this might well
have more than one system. Motion detectors. Pressure
plates on the carpeted staircase. He would limit his search
to the downstairs rooms.

In the living room, he found what he was looking for.
Atop a grand piano, there was an assortment of family
photographs. The gray-haired man in several of these had
to be Hobbs. Moon studied his face, mentally darkening
the hair, smoothing out the skin. It was not a face that he
had seen before. He was disappointed. Bart Hobbs was
not Armin Rasmussen. He was far too small, at least a
decade too young.

The photos showed that Bart Hobbs led an active life
for a Wall Street big shot. Most men in that field are
reluctant to take vacations. Yet here was Hobbs in golfing
attire, sitting in his monogrammed golf cart. Hobbs in
tennis whites being handed a trophy. Hobbs with a fishing
rod posing next to a hoisted marlin. Hobbs with several
other men, a snowy background this time, all dressed in
ski clothing.

Moon studied that photograph. He knew none of those faces either. In the background stood a house that resem
bled a Swiss chalet. It had window boxes with fake red flowers in them and elaborate carved molding under the
eaves and on the wooden balconies. The chimney had his
monogram, a large BH, set into the stone. An estate sign
in the foreground bore the name
Playing Hobbs.
The man
likes puns, thought Moon.

He turned the photograph over. A card, taped to the
back, gave a date and a list of names. None was familiar.
Most were what he called rich man names. Men with first
names that sounded like last names, half of them followed
by numerals.

Gardner Lowell IV
...
Frampton Childress II
...
Avery
Haverford Bellows.

This last had no numeral but had
three
last names plus
a nickname written in parentheses. Nickname was
“Dink.” Even their nicknames are rich.

There was a fourth name, not like the rest. That name
was Victor Turkel. It was a clunky kind of name, and
Moon had no trouble guessing which one it belonged to.
He had to be the fat one wearing steamed-up glasses, kind
of hanging back as if he was not all that eager to be in
the picture. The other three, besides Hobbs, were all thin
and looked fit and had haircuts in the style of George
Bush.

But no Armin Rasmussen. No one who even resembled
him. That would have been too much to hope for.

The photograph made him think of Michael again. But this time he realized why. The house was a ski lodge in
Maine. Michael had gone there once with the English girl,
Bronwyn. Hobbs had invited them.