seven
I was up early and waiting for the paper the next morning. I scanned the main section. No mention of anonymous burglars in black found hurt at banker’s home. Honeycutt was a prominent citizen. If they’d been found, they would have been reported. They must have dragged themselves away before the police got there. Given how hard I’d hit them, it was more likely the uninjured one had returned with reinforcements and carried them off. The Cobb County police would have noticed the mess upstairs but that wouldn’t be big enough news to hit the main section, and my local news section was all Dekalb County, not Cobb. I shrugged, and it hurt. Muscles going from rest to full output in less than a second felt sore the next day no matter how fit or ready you thought you were. I wanted a long soak in the bath but the cut on my ribs was crusting over nicely and I didn’t want to get it wet. I lay flat on my back on the living room floor and did Chi Gung breathing until all I could smell was the wool rug, and I ran with sweat, and the tightness eased. Then I called the zone six precinct house.
Just like the man himself, Denneny’s voice mail is pleasant, relaxed, and gives away nothing. “This is Brian Denneny, zone six captain. Let me know how I can help you and I or an assistant will get back to you very shortly.” It was a masterpiece of misdirection. “Very shortly” could mean anything, and his assistant was never allowed to listen to the messages on pain of excommunication. Denneny made it sound as though he were open to inquiries from all and sundry but in fact his secretary was instructed to give the extension to no one, not even his children. He had given it to his lieutenants, and the police chief, and the mayor. Everyone else went through the chain of command or left messages with the desk sergeant—but it didn’t do for one’s message to sound unwilling before the great voting public if someone like the mayor called.
“Brian, it’s Aud. While you’ve been sampling the produce of Napa Valley and basking in the gentle breezes, I’ve been doing your job. Remember that arson and murder case in Inman Park, corpse name of Lusk—the one you’ve classified as a drug case? It’s not. Or at least only partially. It turns out that the torch was from out of town and was brought in by one Michael Honeycutt, a banker with Massut Vere who appears to be washing money for Arellano’s successor.
“Here’s what I know. Honeycutt has been laundering for a year or more. To my certain knowledge, he’s washed more than twelve million in the last few months but I imagine the real total is several times that amount. Some of the dirty money is turned into art: small, precious and smuggleable. Mostly he gets this from public dealers, but recently he went to a private source, which is when things started to go wrong. It turns out that in the last few months our banker has developed a little sideline of his own, faking some of this art, then selling both the original and the fake. Proceeds from the genuine article find their way back to whoever is running Honeycutt, those from the fake go straight to whoever has been blackmailing him for the last year or so. Apparently the blackmail rate went up at the beginning of the year. He probably no longer has enough money to stash in his personal bank account in the Seychelles.
“Honeycutt acquired a fake painting from our old friends Lois and Mitchum Kenworthy. My client suspected fraud and sent the picture to an art appraiser, Lusk. Honeycutt ordered the torching of Lusk’s house, Lusk, and the painting. You can add attempted murder to the murder, conspiracy and arson charges: my client was also supposed to die in that fire. However, I doubt she’s in much danger at this point. The evidence is gone, and Honeycutt doesn’t know she’s been interested—and whoever is blackmailing Honeycutt seems to be smarter than he is. I think he’ll keep him under control. At least for now. One thing that doesn’t fit in all this, though, is the coke found in Lusk’s garage”—I wasn’t quite sure where the three men who had been at Honeycutt’s house last night fit, either—“but luckily finding out is not part of my job description. Nor is it in my job description to prove any of this, so I’m not going to bother trying. Let’s just say I got the information from a reliable source.” He would probably figure it out. “And you could always haul in the Kenworthys. Whatever you decide to do, I’m done with this. Once I write up the invoice for my client, I’m taking off for a week or two to plant trees in north Georgia.” Or the Carolinas, or anywhere where people had stripped the earth and I could forget myself, forget all this while bending and planting, forking the rich dirt back over roots, making something instead of breaking it. “Send me a case of something good from one of those wineries.”
He always did. I always wrote him a cheque.
I got up and went into my office, turned the computer on, and pulled up the template I used for invoices. A warm breeze sneaked through the screened window and ruffled my papers. I typed in the Lyon Art address, Attn. Julia Lyons-Bennet. Denneny would not be pleased at my news, he liked things clean and clear and simple, but he was a good cop and, besides, he might see some political hay to be made by the connection of a prominent banker with the drug trade. Once he got started, he would be thorough. Let Denneny find out who had left the coke in Lusk’s garage, and why; let Denneny work out who was blackmailing Honeycutt. Maybe he’d give the blackmailer a medal. Julia had the information she wanted; my job was done.
I added up dates, times and expenses, and started transferring totals to the form.
A receipt fluttered out of reach. When I reached for it the scab over my ribs stretched and cracked. I pressed the gauze tight with my right hand until the warm trickle stopped. Who carried knives these days? Someone who had reason to be quiet. Someone who had been ordered to be quiet by a man or woman who had a lot to lose. The blackmailer. Find the man with the knife and he would lead you to someone else. Someone interesting. But Denneny didn’t know about the men in black who had tried to slip a knife between my ribs and I couldn’t tell him anyone had even tried. That evidence was not only inadmissible, it was illegal, and he had given me a hard time about breaking rules in the past.
Who or wherever the men were now, they would be needing a doctor. I could tell Denneny to canvas the accident and emergency rooms of five counties to find two men brought in on the same night: one with displaced ribs, shattered cheekbone, and—depending on how much my fist had slipped on his sweat—compressed cervical vertebrae; one with a broken jaw, dislocated shoulder and probably concussion. But it was a lot of work, and Denneny wouldn’t start for a few days, and, meanwhile, whoever had sent them probably had a good description of Julia from the man she had hit.
What could that third man say? White, five-foot-seven, a hundred and twenty-five pounds, blue eyes, long dark hair, a pale imitation of the real Julia standing there, head thrown back, glorious in her triumph. It might be a generic description, but if they worked for Honeycutt it would be enough. But why would Honeycutt employ people to sneak around his own house? It had to be the blackmailer. And one of them had seen, had most definitely seen Julia’s face.
I saved the file for later and went back into the living room for the phone.
“Eddie? Did any of your reporters hear about a break-in at the Cobb County home of Michael Honeycutt, Fallgood Road, last night? Good. Give me the details.”
There was little enough: police, in response to an anonymous call, had proceeded to the Marietta home of banker Michael Honeycutt only to find that the burglars had left some time before. Officers were reported as being puzzled at traces of blood found in an upstairs room. Honeycutt could not be reached for comment; he was believed to be out of the country. Convenient, but it meant nothing one way or the other.