An Echo of Death (22 page)

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Authors: Mark Richard Zubro

BOOK: An Echo of Death
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“Are Scott and I still going to be in danger?” I asked.
“With both Frederico and Pedro dead,” Quinn said, “I doubt it.”
“Frederico looked like Swiss cheese,” Bolewski said. “I made sure I got up close to see him. I wanted to be able to tell my grandkids.”
“There isn't much of an organization left to chase you,” Quinn said. “Those three gave us all this information. All of them are going to be in jail in this country forever, and if enough time ever passes for them to be out of jail, then they'll be sent back to South America for more trials. They don't care about Scott Carpenter or Tom Mason anymore. Nobody cares anymore.”
“So Frederico's guys killed Glen Proctor,” I said.
“
That
none of the three knew for sure or would admit at this point,” Quinn said. “Probably some of the dead guys executed him.”
We'd been sitting in a small conference room with modern
fixtures and comfortable chairs. I was tired from lack of sleep and spent emotions. Someone knocked on the door and a young cop stuck his head in the room. He whispered briefly to Quinn, then left.
Quinn said, “Your lawyer's here.” It was nearly noon. We met Todd, who was dressed impeccably, as always. A woman named Debra McKenna was with him. We trudged to the cafeteria where I guzzled more orange juice and wolfed down an omelet. We exchanged stories about our adventures, then Todd said, “Debra is my accountant. She has found more information. She and I have been working together since I got her out of bed at five this morning.” She wore a beige skirt, white blouse, and a blue blazer. Her briefcase was five inches thick and solid black. She opened it and pulled out three folders.
“I have more information on the Proctors. The government has been watching both people for some time,” Debra said. “Each has been under investigation. Mr. Proctor is thought to have been bribing a slew of Mexican government employees. It is highly illegal to bribe foreign officials. It cost one company nearly ten million in fines not more than a few years ago, and they lost a great deal of their business. So that kind of evidence is going to hurt him. He'll have to go to trial, of course, and it will take years. While the fines he'll have to pay aren't as critical as they would be to ordinary mortals, the loss of business will at least cramp his style. We've also been tracking down rumors of Mrs. Proctor being involved in an illegal banking scheme that would make the BCCI mess look like the local five-and-dime. The whole labyrinthine scheme is complicated even more because both Proctors spent huge amounts of time, money, and resources obfuscating their own and each other's work.”
“Mother and Father are fierce competitors,” I said. “They hate each other. They are desperate to hurt one another. They'd have sold a nursing home full of grandparents
to get their way. Maybe Glen was double-crossing both of them too.” I explained about the information Bill Proctor had.
“The data he has could probably really hurt them,” she said.
“Won't the Mexican government want to do something about the relics we found?” I asked.
“If the Proctors were involved, the Mexican government is not in the business of offending fabulously wealthy American businesspeople who might invest millions in their country. They are happy to get the relics back, fake or real. They are more happy to get the jobs. Remember, they aren't that eager to prosecute for bribing their officials. It is against American laws, and they'll be prosecuted in American courts.”
“Bill Proctor said his mother and father were supposed to have had some kind of big powwow,” I said. “If they're going to get together here, I'd like to get an invitation to that.”
“Don't do something illegal,” Todd warned.
I told him I wouldn't.
Debra and Todd left.
I asked the cops, “If Glen was using an alias and they killed him, why did they chase us after they found the body in the penthouse?”
“We don't know if whoever got there first thought they were killing Scott Carpenter or Glen Proctor. The second group saw you run. Did they know who killed Glen? If they looked at identification and saw Glen Proctor and they were after Scott Carpenter, would that change what they did? We'll probably never be sure. A lot depends on who could recognize Proctor. We just don't know who got there first. The second group was probably Pedro's men, and they hadn't killed the dead guy, and they didn't know who you were. You didn't stay to answer questions. They may have chased you simply to talk to you, or they may have thought you had specific knowledge and they wanted to
kill you. The guys who are talking are being helpful, but very careful. Their lawyers are with them, so it's a very touchy situation.”
“Who came and got the body, and why?” I asked. “And if it wasn't the killers, how did whoever came know it was there?”
Even with these unanswered questions, none of the official folks wanted to pursue Glen's death. They had buckets full of suspects on the South Side, all dead. Without a body, there wasn't a lot to work with. Besides, they had a perfect explanation with the biggest drug kingpins on two continents dead in the city morgue. “The Proctor murder was a case of mistaken identity,” Bolewski said. “Be glad it wasn't you, and forget it.”
The cops left.
I visited with Scott. He was awake, and I gave him all the news. But he was tired and I was exhausted. After a while, he pressed the button on the side of the bed to lower it. When it reached a comfortable spot he took his finger off the control, leaned back, and shut his eyes.
I thought I'd sit in the chair for a while before going home. After a few minutes, I'd begun to nod off when a nurse came in. She had a puzzled expression on her face.
“This just came for Scott Carpenter or Tom Mason,” she said. She looked at Scott. “I know who he is, but who's Mason?”
“I am,” I said.
She gave me the envelope.
“Where'd this come from?” I asked.
“One of those messenger services,” she said. She left.
Inside the envelope was a message from Bill Proctor. It didn't say where he was, but it did say that he had a meeting with his parents at the North Shore mansion late this afternoon. He asked me to be there. I realized he couldn't have called. Because of the multitude of media, we'd had the phone turned off in Scott's room.
The cops had brought my pickup truck to the hospital.
I stopped in the cafeteria and drank three more cans of orange juice, which revived me enough for the moment.
Lake Shore Drive, Sheridan Road, all the wealth of the north suburbs were a blur as I sped to the Proctors'. It was late afternoon, and the rush-hour traffic was heavy.
When I got there, I wasn't about to knock and ask permission to enter. I drove to a hundred feet from the front entrance. I set the truck in gear and jumped out. I then climbed the wall, jumped down to the other side, and strolled to the front door. I figured they had some kind of surveillance on the grounds, but I hoped the diversion of the truck smashing into the gate and my determination would get me through.
Actually, I got as far as the liveried servant and the front door before several armed security guards in green army fatigues showed up. I grabbed James, the butler, and used him as a buffer for the few seconds it took to get inside.
“Where are they?” I said.
“I'm sure I don't know what you mean,” he said.
Not bad for a guy with an arm around his windpipe. I flung him outside and slammed the door, then raced to the grand staircase.
I took the stairs three at a time. They'd have to figure out where I'd gone. This seemed my quickest way out of anybody's line of sight. Seconds after I reached the top, I heard wild scrambling and feet pounding behind me on the marble floor, then the softer thud of boots thumping on the carpet up the stairs after me.
For a few seconds, I felt as if I was in one of those Marx Brothers comedies, or maybe the Three Stooges, with doors opening and slamming shut and characters rushing in and out.
I managed to get back to the first floor to a room that opened onto a patio outside some French windows before a machine-gun-toting kid, maybe all of eighteen, met me coming in a door I was going out. He leveled the trembling gun in my direction.
A door opened behind me.
“What is this?” Jason Proctor's voice said.
I swiveled my head around, and the kid poked the muzzle of his gun into my chest. I stepped back.
Mr. Proctor approached.
“We're going to talk,” I said.
He glared at me.
“Get rid of him,” Proctor said. “If you have to, shoot him.”
“Is that how Glen died?” I asked. “You just gave an order, and the boys took care of it for you?”
He walked up to me swiftly and slapped me hard.
“Not happy about the truth?”
I caught his hand the next time he raised it, but my soldier buddy whapped me on the side of the head with his gun.
I barely felt it. The adrenaline poured through my body.
Mrs. Proctor walked into my field of vision from the back of the room.
“Jason!” Her voice was sharp.
The three of us looked at her as she marched across the room.
“We'll discuss this like civilized people!”
By this point, a large contingent of servants and guards had arrived.
“Go!” Mrs. Proctor commanded. One word, and they went. “Bill is in the library,” she said. She led us to a room with floor-to-ceiling bookcases lined with books that all had golden spines and embossed lettering.
Three groups of black leather chairs sat from the front of the room to the back: one at the door, one in the middle, and one at the far end. In one of the black leather chairs in the middle of the room, Bill Proctor sat. He wore a white fisherman's sweater, dark blue jeans and white socks and gym shoes. He barely looked at me. Mrs. Proctor wore a beige wool pant suit. Mr. Proctor was in a blue blazer, white shirt, duck trousers, and penny loafers.
Mrs. Proctor pointed at me. “Why is this person here?”
“Because he was honest with me. Because I trust him. Because I want him here,” Bill said. He glared at his mother.
With practiced grace, she shrugged off his tone and aggressiveness and indicated seats. I took the chair across from Bill, and Mr. Proctor sat to my right. Mrs. Proctor told her husband she didn't want a chair.
She stood in the center of the Oriental carpet that nearly touched the bookcases around the edges.
“Where have you been?” I asked Bill.
He picked up a briefcase from next to his chair. He clicked the locks open and spilled the contents onto the rug.
“What's the meaning of this?” Mr. Proctor asked.
“Oh, bluster out your ass, Jason!” Mrs. Proctor said.
“Where's Glen's body?” Bill asked.
“How dare you?” Jason asked.
“How dare I, Dad? I'll tell you how. I've been using the past twelve hours to have all the materials on the disks transcribed and analyzed. It cost me a small fortune, but I learned how to spend from both of you. Besides being a record of all that Glen had been up to, it was a record of what you and your companies have been doing.”
Bill was breathing heavily and his fists clenched and unclenched.
“Now son,” Mr. Proctor started.
“I'm going to do all the talking,” Bill said.
“Shut up and let him,” Mrs. Proctor said.
“You keep silent, too, Mom!” Bill said.
Mouth agape, she plopped abruptly into a chair.
Bill picked up a sheaf of papers from the floor. “Glen explained everything in code on paper or on the computer disks. First the necklaces. That was a lark he got into just two weeks ago. He's worked with the drug people for a while, but he just got the information on them about two
months ago, the final details a few days before he was killed. The relic stealing was a fluke. Brad Stawalski got some hot stuff he couldn't get rid of. He knew Glen had connections. Brad didn't tell the truth. Neither of you thought Glen could ever make plans and carry them out, but he did. I know that a lot of what he did was to con people. He took precautions when dealing with the drug people, like using a fake name.” Bill tossed the papers he'd been holding in a heap on the floor. He wiped his hands across his face.
Both of his parents started to speak.
“Be silent!” he shouted at them. “Just for once in your lives, shut the fuck up!” The fury and anger in his tone and the glare of his eyes pierced through their consciousness and held them dumb.
“The rest of the information on the disks was about you two. Glen wasn't just trying to get dirt on you guys. He actually seemed to be trying to be part of both companies. He desperately wanted you to respect him. Even more, Glen the joker, the wild one, always desperately wanted the two of you to get along. We used to talk about it. He wanted no more fights. All that acting out he did as a kid was a way to try and get your attention off each other and onto himself. Glen hadn't changed much.”

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