The voice came from the other side of the wall and he recognized it immediately. Neal Burnside.
“Yeah,” Griffin said. “You in a cell, too?”
“The lap of luxury, isn’t it?”
“Where are we?”
“Somewhere in Mexico, guests of Señor Diego de Boriga.”
Griffin remembered the name. It was the last thing he’d heard before he woke up here. “Who is he and what does he want with us?”
“There’s no point lying to me,” Burnside said.
“Because you’re my lawyer and we have attorney-client privilege?” He said it derisively, knowing full well that Burnside was probably the reason he was sitting in that cell. Burnside was the only person on earth who’d known where he was.
“Because we’re prisoners of a brutal Vibora drug lord who invested his mob’s money with you and wants it all back.”
Griffin had never met Diego de Boriga, but then a drug lord probably wouldn’t introduce himself as one, or reveal that his money was dirty, to someone he thought was a legitimate investment banker.
“I had no idea I was laundering anybody’s drug money.”
Not that it mattered. Griffin never cared where the money came from, whether it was from little old ladies or from mob bosses, as long as it kept coming in.
“You told him where to find me,” Griffin said. “You ratted me out.”
“Of course I did,” Burnside said without a trace of guilt or regret in his voice.
“I would never have asked for your help to go into hiding if I’d known you’d tell anybody who asked where to find me.”
“Not anybody, just Mexican drug lords ready to take a blowtorch to my balls to get your home address.”
“I thought you were a man of principle.”
“I am, and my basic, overriding, number one principle is personal survival.”
“What makes you think he won’t kill us both now?”
“I’m a pretty good judge of character. For instance, I knew you were a crook the second you walked through my door.”
“That’s because everybody who walks through your door is a crook, including you.”
“I know you hate me right now, but I still consider myself your lawyer. I am looking out for your best interests. What we are facing is like a trial, with Diego de Boriga as judge, jury, and executioner. You need to let me do the talking for both of us.”
“You sold me out once before, how do I know you won’t do it again?”
“You don’t,” Burnside said. “But what other choice do you have?”
On Nick’s orders, Willie flew them from Dajmaboutu to a secluded bay near Jakarta where Nick had underworld contacts. In return for Griffin’s seaplane, the contacts fabricated replacement fake passports for Nick, Willie, and Kate, complete with Indonesian customs point-of-entry stamps that matched the date of their actual arrival. Nick accessed funds from his Shanghai bank account and bought three first-class tickets on separate flights on different airlines back to the United States.
Seventy-two hours after the events on Dajmaboutu, a tanned but tired Kate O’Hare met her boss, Carl Jessup, at a McDonald’s off the I-10 freeway in Indio, California, and gave him Derek Griffin’s laptop computer. There were a couple bullet holes in the thick, protective casing, but otherwise it was fine.
They ordered Big Mac Extra Value Meals, and while they ate, Jessup booted up the computer, punched in the password “Sikandergul,” and used the restaurant’s free wireless access to transfer $500 million from Griffin’s Cayman Islands bank account into the U.S. Treasury’s coffers.
Kate and Jessup celebrated the successful covert recovery of the stolen money with two large McFlurries.
Later that same day, Griffin and Burnside were hosed down and given clean clothes. The lawyer didn’t know whether that was a good sign or a very, very bad one.
Once they were dressed, Char took them at gunpoint to the house for an audience with Diego de Boriga. Boriga was relaxing in the shade on a chaise, sipping a sangria. He was dressed in a Ringspun Kyuzo panther glitter T-shirt, black skinny jeans, and Diesel sneakers. He reeked of Dolce & Gabbana men’s cologne, which prevented the pervasive stench of rot in the air from reaching his nostrils.
“Sit,” he said, gesturing to the two chairs across from him. “I’m sorry I wasn’t able to see you earlier, Mr. Griffin, but I was engaged in some other business. I trust you have recovered from your long journey in the meantime. I am Diego de Boriga. Does that name mean anything to you?”
“He didn’t know who you were, or anything about your money, until I informed him of his predicament,” Burnside said.
“I wasn’t talking to you, was I? If you answer for Mr. Griffin again, Char will slit your throat. Nod if you understand.”
Burnside nodded.
Diego shifted his gaze back to Griffin. “Do you know who I am?” he asked Griffin.
Griffin didn’t want to insult the man’s ego by not knowing who he was, but he also didn’t want to start their conversation by contradicting Burnside and, perhaps, irritating the drug lord.
“I do now,” Griffin said, “but I didn’t know who you were before I got here or that you’d invested money with me.”
“Are you familiar with the Central California Farmworkers Children’s Education Fund?”
He was. They were one of the many nonprofits whose cash he managed, invested, and completely pilfered. He felt the safest reply was just one word:
“Yes.”
“That was mine. By that, I mean it was Vibora profits as well as the life savings of every man, woman, and child in the village of Boriga. We gave it to you for safekeeping and growth, but you stole it all.”
“If I’d known it was yours, I would never have taken it.”
“That’s your first lie,” Diego said. “Tell me another, and I will pluck out one of your eyeballs.”
“I can give you all of your money back,” Griffin said. “With interest.”
“You already have,” Diego said, and lifted a towel on the chaise beside him to reveal Griffin’s laptop computer. “I may even rename my new estate Sikandergul in your honor.”
Griffin went light-headed, as if he’d experienced a sudden and profound loss of blood. Five hundred million dollars, he thought. Gone. All those years of diligent embezzlement and fraud. All his careful planning. All his extraordinary risk. All for nothing. He was completely broke, homeless, and facing prison time in the United States and, perhaps, Indonesia as well, if he was ever caught. How could it have gone so wrong so fast?
“As you can see, Griffin is a ruined man,” Burnside said, not able to contain himself any longer. “I think we can also agree that you’ve been made whole on your losses, and richly compensated beyond any reasonable measure for the insult, the despair, and the misery that you and the people of Boriga felt as a result of his betrayal. The suffering and humiliation he faces now will be an everlasting torture that’s deeper and more agonizing than any physical pain you could inflict.”
Griffin was convinced this was true. In fact, he was tempted to ask Char to slit his throat right there. But his fear of death was greater than his fear of poverty.
“You’ve had your vengeance and retribution,” Burnside said to Boriga. “Is there really any purpose served by punishing Griffin any further or holding me in any way accountable for his actions? You’re an intelligent, honorable man. You know in your heart that there’s no reason not to let us both go free.”
Burnside was confident that this would end like all of his other trials. He’d get to walk out of the courtroom no matter what the jury, in this case Diego de Boriga, decided about his client. His reasoning was simple. It was Griffin who’d committed the crime. Burnside was just his lawyer. Yes, he’d helped his client avoid justice, but isn’t that what a good lawyer is supposed to do? Diego would certainly understand that and not begrudge him for bending the law on his client’s behalf. Wouldn’t Diego expect the same level of representation for
himself? Of course he would. So Burnside felt pretty good about his chances. He was far less certain about Griffin’s odds.
“You make a very persuasive argument, Mr. Burnside,” Diego said.
“Thank you.”
Diego nodded to himself and slapped his hands on his thighs, making a decision. “Very well. You may go.”
Burnside smiled to himself. You are a superstar, baby. Doesn’t matter if the trial is in federal court or a drug lord’s living room, you’re the lion king amid a herd of zebras.
“Excuse me?” Griffin said, blinking hard. It was not the outcome he was expecting.
“My men will blindfold you, drive you to a remote location, and set you free.”
“How do we know you won’t execute us?” Griffin asked.
“As Mr. Burnside pointed out in his eloquent argument, I am an honorable man. I keep my word. Where you go after you are released, or how you get there, is your problem. But if you ever speak of me, or tell anyone that we have the money Mr. Griffin stole, I will slaughter you and anyone you’ve ever loved, including pets. How does that sound?”
“Very generous,” Burnside said.
Diego smiled. “That’s what people always say about me.”
Kate and Nick were watching on monitors in the surveillance room on the second floor of the house. Kate had watched covert shakedowns and stings before. This one was especially satisfying.
Nick was sitting in the chair beside Kate and gave her a nudge. “Sweet, isn’t it? And the fun isn’t over yet.”
Char put hoods over the prisoners’ heads, bound their wrists with plastic zip ties, and led them to a panel van parked in the compound. Burnside and Griffin climbed inside and sat down. The door slid shut with a heavy clank. The truck left the compound and they rode over the bumpy, rutted roads in silence.
Burnside was relaxed, basking in his success, but Griffin was shaking, convinced that they were being taken for execution to the pit where the bodies of Diego’s enemies were left to rot.
The truck came to a stop fifteen minutes later. The rear door was opened, and Char pulled them out, stood them in the sandy dirt on the shoulder of the road, and cut the zip ties around their wrists with a knife.
“You are being watched,” Char said. “Do not remove your hoods for five minutes after I have driven off or you will be shot.”
“Understood,” Burnside said.
Char got into the truck and they heard him drive away. Burnside began to count off the five minutes, sixty seconds at a time, in his head. The relief that Griffin felt at not being executed gave way to worry as the enormity of his bad situation hit him full force. He was stuck in the middle of Mexico without even a peso in his pocket.
“How are we supposed to get home?” Griffin asked.
“Shut up, or I’ll lose count.”
“You can just walk through the nearest U.S. border crossing and go back to your life, but what about me? I’m a wanted fugitive. I’ll have to stay here and live like a peasant.”
That was true, but Burnside didn’t care what happened to Griffin now that the man was penniless. “Would you rather be dead?”
“I might as well be.”
“Where there’s life, there’s hope.”
Griffin yanked off his hood. He didn’t give a damn if the five minutes were up or not. Let the bastards shoot him. He squinted, temporarily blinded by the harsh sunlight, before he was able to see the large sign directly in front of him. It read: El Pollo Loco coming soon to this location. Just past the sign a dirt road cut across a vast expanse of graded desert and the foundations for future structures mapped out with wooden stakes. And beyond the staked property was a broad boulevard lined with several big box stores and scores of fast food franchises. Palm trees dotted the sand-and-asphalt commercial landscape.
Two patrol cars raced up the road toward them, lights flashing, sirens silent. Behind the cars, there was a sprawl of housing developments, green grass, and more palm trees. Rising above it all, just a few blocks away, was the tower of the Fantasy Springs Resort Casino, the tallest building for miles.
Burnside pulled off his hood and turned around, taking all of this in just as the two Indio Police Department cruisers slid to a stop. “We aren’t in Mexico and we were never prisoners of the Viboras,” he said.
“We’ve been conned,” Griffin said. “I was played from the first moment Eunice Huffnagle showed up on my island.” He gave his head a very small shake. “It was brilliant.”
Nick, Kate, and their crew watched it all unfold from the window of the presidential suite at the Fantasy Springs Resort Casino. The only thing they couldn’t see from this distance were the expressions on the faces of Derek Griffin and Neal Burnside as they were taken into custody by the police, following an anonymous call from Kate.
Kate knew that by the time the two men reached the Indio police station, agents from the local FBI field office would be there waiting for them. Griffin would definitely go to prison, perhaps for the rest of his life. As for Burnside, she supposed there was a chance that he might avoid prison for aiding and abetting Griffin’s flight from justice, but he’d almost surely lose his license to practice law. So Burnside was finished, too.
“We did it,” Nick said, passing out glasses of champagne to his crew. “We got back half a billion dollars in stolen money and nailed the guys responsible, all as a result of your unique skills and hard work.”
Kate clinked his glass. “And on behalf of all the victims of Derek Griffin’s crimes, we thank you.”
“It was the best role of my career,” Boyd said. “My one regret is that I don’t have anything for my reel.”
“My regret is that I didn’t get to be the honey trap,” Willie said. “I would have gotten some mileage out of Griffin before he got carted off.”
“I don’t have any regrets,” Tom said.
Chet nodded. “Me neither. You can call me anytime.”
“So what’s next?” Willie asked.
“That’s up to you,” Kate said. “Our job’s done.”
Nick checked the time. “We need to leave. You guys better get going. The two of us will finish covering our tracks.”
Tom, Chet, and Willie left, and Kate and Nick stayed behind.
“You did good,” Kate said. “It was an amazing con. And so far as I know, you didn’t steal anything.”
“Yeah, it doesn’t feel right. It’s like something’s missing.”
Kate pulled a small gift-wrapped package out of her tote bag, and handed the package to Nick. “A memento.”
Nick tore the paper off the package and grinned. He was holding a first edition copy of Rudyard Kipling’s The Man Who Would Be King.
“This is perfect,” he said. “I love it. You stole this from Griffin’s library when you went back for the laptop, didn’t you?”
She nodded. “I thought you should have it.”
He flashed her the thousand-watt smile. “Do you realize what this means?”
“Yeah, I’m a thief.”
“Honey, that’s such a turn-on.”
He reached for her, and she jumped away.
“Stand down,” Kate said. “My hands are lethal weapons.”
Nick backed her against the wall and leaned into her. “I’ve got a better lethal weapon than you do,” he said. “Wanna see it?”
“No!”
Good lord, she could feel his lethal weapon pressing against her belly. It was big and hard. And as much as she hated to admit it, his big, hard weapon was exactly what she needed. She looked down and gasped because it was so perfect.
“Is this for me?” she asked.
“Absolutely,” he said. “Take it if you want it.”
“I want it,” she said. “I really, really want it.”
It was a Toblerone bar. Giant size.
“It’s more a symbol than a memento,” Nick said, handing her the Toblerone. “So where does this leave us?”
“It leaves us waiting for our next assignment fro
m Deputy Director Bolton,” she said. “I go back to being an FBI agent and you go back to being a fugitive on the run from the law. But I should warn you, I’ve been reassigned to head up the manhunt, so stay out of trouble.”
“We’ll see,” he said.
From #1 New York Times bestselling author
JANET EVANOVICH
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TAKEDOWN TWENTY
Stephanie Plum and the gang are back …
NOVEMBER 19, 2013
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It was late at night and Lula and I were hunting down Salvatore Sunucchi, better known as Uncle Sunny, when Lula spotted Jimmy Spit. Spit had his prehistoric Cadillac Eldorado parked on the fringe of the Trenton public housing projects, half a block from Sunucchi’s apartment, and he had the trunk lid up.
“Hold on here,” Lula said. “Jimmy’s open for business, and it looks to me like he got a trunk full of handbags. I might need one of them. A girl can never have too many handbags.”
Five minutes later, Lula was examining a purple Brahmin bag studded with what Spit claimed were Swarovski crystals. “Are you sure this is a authentic Brahmin bag?” Lula asked Spit. “I don’t want no cheap-ass imitation.”
“I have it on good authority these are the real deal,” Spit said. “And just for you I’m only charging ten bucks. How could you go wrong?”
Lula put the bag on her shoulder to take it for a test drive, and a giraffe loped past us and continued on down the road, turning left at Sixteenth Street and disappearing into the darkness.
“I didn’t see that,” Lula said.
“I didn’t see that neither,” Spit said. “You want to buy this handbag or what?”