“Edvard,” Julia said suddenly, looking at one, “where did the idea for this sculpture park come from?”
He blushed, and spoke in English. “The company made a big, a large profit last year. Which is good. But it was so large, it felt…it was felt we should not keep it all. We talked about giving it to a charity, but there are so many. And then we thought we could…” He pulled his thoughts together. “This part of the city is being built again. For a long time it was…”
“Desolate,” I supplied.
“Yes. Desolate and empty. We can help to make it better, to give the people something good. And it will help to make more money, too.”
He glanced at his watch and his face fell. “It’s five minutes past four o’clock.” He stood abruptly. “Thank you. Thank you. Perhaps we can meet again tomorrow?”
Julia looked surprised at his haste but she stood. “Certainly. The same time?”
“Earlier,” I suggested. “Perhaps the morning.”
“Yes,” he said. “Eleven o’clock?”
The corridor was crowded. There was a queue for the lift. We took the stairs. Unlike an American stairwell, it smelled fresh and well ventilated; often used.
“So what happened?” Julia asked on the way down. “It all seemed to be going so well then suddenly, phhtt, he wants to get rid of us.”
“Norwegians finish their workday at four sharp. He probably considered it very bad manners to have kept you past that time.”
“Ah. Did you see how he blushed when I asked whose idea the park was? He seems a bit young to be in charge.”
“He’ll live or die by this project. If it fails, his career fails.”
“Then we’d better make sure it doesn’t.”
We. How odd.
Outside, the streets were busy with home-bound office workers. “Would you like a walk before dinner?”
“Only if it’s an aimless American stroll. And only if we get a taxi back to the hotel first so I can change out of this corporate drag.”
When we got to the hotel, Julia suggested I wait in the lobby: It wouldn’t take her a minute. I read Dagbladet, a name that translated pragmatically to The Daily Newspaper. Julia came back down in jeans and the sunset-coloured sweater.
We wandered up Karl Johansgate, now almost deserted, to Slottsparken.
We walked under the trees. “In winter this is all white, and crisscrossed by ski trails.” Strangers are easy to see. “Tante Hjørdis bumped into King Haakon, literally bumped into him, over there near that statue.”
“No security people?”
“The royal family are very informal.”
“So how old is she?”
“In her seventies, I think. And she skis every day in winter.”
“You come from good genes. How about your mother—is she like you and Hjørdis?”
“And how is that?”
She looked me up and down slowly. “Tall. Strong. Hidden. But Hjørdis’s eyes are more blue. And she is less complicated, I think. Still very Norwegian. I don’t think you are.”
Under the tree shadow, I couldn’t read her face. “My mother’s eyes are more blue, also. She’s shorter than Hjørdis. About your height, but wider. She is…subtle.”
“You must have learned it from her.” We reached the statue, which was surrounded by an ironwork fence resembling bare winter branches. Before I could stop her, Julia climbed over it and strode to the bronze statue. “Camille Collett,” she read from the plaque. An early Norwegian writer. She beckoned me over. There was no English translation, but instead of asking me to tell her what it said, she touched my arm and said, “Aud, I want you to be less like your subtle mother and more Norwegian. I want you to tell me the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth—everything you know about Michael Honeycutt. Tell me what he’s up to, who those men might have been in his house. I need to know why Jim really died and if I’m…if they’re likely to come after me when we get back to Atlanta. I need to know.” She stood straight, unconsciously graceful, utterly serious.
“Let’s find somewhere to sit.”
The bar was only half a block from the Bristol. It had a Wurlitzer jukebox, a reasonable-looking menu, and table service. The music was loud, and the server had a sneer due more to a pierced upper lip than essential attitude.
“Ol,” I said, “and akevit.” The shots and beer chasers came swiftly. “Just bring us refills when you see our glasses empty.” I picked up the akevit. “Skal.” We drank it down.
Julia breathed heavily through her nose, and her eyes watered. “Not unlike grappa.” She folded her hands together before her on the table. The formal effect was spoilt by her having to shout above the music. “I know you’ve told me what I paid to find out, but I would like the rest, with no evasions, no elisions, and no sugarcoating.”
“I don’t have all the pieces.”
“Then give me what you have.”
I sipped my beer, considering. “When you first asked for my help, you were adamant that the arson and Jim’s death had nothing to do with drugs. You were right in that Jim was just an innocent bystander, but you were wrong in that the case has everything to do with drugs. No, just listen. Honeycutt has been laundering money for the Tijuana cocaine cartel. Don’t confuse the Mexican cartels with those from Colombia. They don’t produce or process, all they do is ship or sometimes simply allow passage.”
I used the salt shaker to pour an outline of central and north America onto the formica. I put my thumb across Mexico. “The Mexicans, here, are middlemen: the Colombians can’t get their product to the western U.S. if the Mexicans don’t allow it.” I lifted my thumb. “The Tijuana cartel employs Federal Police, U.S. border inspectors, local police on both sides of the border, and San Diego and Los Angeles gang members. For U.S. drug enforcement, it used to just be a western and border states problem, but according to the DEA and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation the influence of both Tijuana and Sinaloa cartels has been marching steadily east.” I drew a salt arrow. “Atlanta passed quietly into the hands of the Tijuana people three years ago. And I mean quietly.”
The server brought us more akevit. I brushed away the map and sipped the icy liquor.
“These cartels have a lot of power and influence. They are almost immune from the law. They own the Mexican Federal Police, and they own the politicians, and the Mexican voters think that’s fine because the only people getting hurt are Americans—and the few Mexicans who don’t play ball. They are smarter, more attuned to the rest of the world, and higher up the business evolutionary tree than the Colombians.”
“What?”
The music was getting louder. “I said, they’re a leaner organization. There’s no Tijuana guy in Los Angeles or San Diego, just his consultants—gang members who act as enforcers and hit men without any of the usual benefits, like protection. The key to the success of these cartels is their relatively low profile: the bloodshed can be passed off as gang warfare; which means the bribes are easier for those in authority to stomach. Money moves to and fro smoothly. Only there’s a great deal of money, and unless the cartel’s bankers can clean it up sufficiently, the heads of the cartels can’t really use it.”
“Money laundering.”
“Precisely.” Behind Julia, someone was smoking hash. I wondered if there were Moroccan cartels. “Honeycutt is laundering tens of millions a year. Some of it must go through his bank, probably in shell accounts, but some gets cleaned up by buying artworks, selling them overseas, then banking the sale money quite legitimately.”