“Just a random check,” says Carlos. “Bring your baggage. I’ll have you on your way in no time.”
Bingo. A quiet back room somewhere. Eddie can bung this Carlos geezer a few hundred dollars.
“Lead the way, Carlos old son,” says Eddie. “So, Rosie D’Antonio? Back and forth all the time, is she?”
“That feels a lot like business, sir,” says Carlos. “And none of your business at that.”
Carlos opens the door to what looks very much to Eddie like an interrogation room. And Eddie knows what an interrogation room looks like. The key now is to make a connection with Carlos Moss, and then seal the deal.
“What kind of music do you like?” Eddie asks. As good a start as any.
“Sir, this is a United States Port of Entry,” says Carlos. “Not a dating app.”
“Big hip-hop fan myself,” says Eddie. This is a lie, but he is taking a punt. He’s a pretty good reader of people. His favorite band is actually Van Halen, but that’s not going to fly here.
“I need you to sit here for a moment,” says Carlos and, once Eddie has sat down, he walks out of the door and closes it behind him.
And, Eddie notes, he locks it from the outside. Another sensation he is familiar with.
Eddie can authorize a payment of up to a thousand dollars for information. He’ll start with an offer of three hundred, and work his way up if need be. He’ll settle in for now, and wait for Carlos to do whatever he needs to do.
He takes out his laptop again. No point wasting time; he’s got business to take care of.
35
Steve has woken up in a tree house. A tree mansion, really, built into the boughs of a South Carolina elm, one of a series connected by walkways through the forest canopy. The tree house has a porch with views for many miles. Steve is now reading the documents from Scroggie’s computer spread out on a low bamboo table in front of him.
Barb is setting them up for the day ahead.
“I could get you a rosehip-tea infusion, or a jasmine and honeysuckle, or a clean juice, or an anti-oxidizing water,” says Barb. “Rosie is having a cactus smoothie, and your lovely daughter-in-law is having water with agave syrup.”
“I don’t suppose I could have a beer?” Steve asks. It would be lunchtime back home.
“No alcohol,” says Barb. “I don’t think we need it, do we?”
“I mean, it’s a point of view,” says Steve.
In the blazing heat, Steve is now wearing his Def Leppard T-shirt, and a pair of blue satin gym shorts Barb has brought him from the lost and found.He has refused, however, to wear flip-flops—there are lines he will not cross—and so is still wearing combat boots.
“No alcohol, no dairy, no meat,” says Barb. “Clean air, clean living.”
“And yet you were a major-league drug dealer for many years, Barb?”
“God don’t care about yesterday,” says Barb. “God cares about tomorrow. I’ll make you a rosehip infusion, and I’ll put a bit of kale in it. But only because you’re so handsome.”
Steve sees Rosie and Amy crossing the walkway toward him. Time for business.
Barb gives him a wink and heads off to get his drink.
Amy and Rosie climb onto the porch and, after hugs and greetings, and a number of comments about Steve’s shorts, attention is turned to murder.
“Fairbanks, Sanchez, Gooch,” says Amy. “All influencers, all flown out to aspirational locations for photo shoots, all shot pretty much the moment they arrive, and all left out on display for the world to see.”
“And all three killed within an hour or so of where you happened to be?” Steve says to Amy.
“And all three clients of Maximum Impact,” says Rosie.
“Two key questions, then,” says Steve. “Why were they killed? And why were you in the vicinity every time?”
“I like the way you say ‘vicinity,’ ” says Rosie.
“Have you found anything in Scroggie’s computer records?” asks Amy.
“One major thing,” says Steve. “I don’t know what we read into this, but it worried me. When Scroggie is sent his instructions for the murder, he is also sent a blood sample.”
“A blood sample?” says Amy.
Steve nods. “And he is asked to leave it at the scene of the killing.”
“To incriminate someone,” says Rosie.
“Presumably,” says Steve.
“Whose blood sample?” Amy asks. “Don’t say mine, Jesus, don’t say mine.”
Steve holds up his hands. “No idea. But is there any way someone could get hold of your blood?”
“Your mandatory drug tests?” suggests Rosie.
