I looked at her, hoping that our fracas in Acton would have convinced her the time for bullshit had passed.
“Drazen was in Betelco,” she said. “That part is true, but I don’t know anything about the FBI agent except that he died.”
“It wasn’t natural causes, Rachel. He was missing his head and his hands when they found him, which, according to the FBI, scared off any other potential witnesses in the Betelco case. That sounds like Drazen to me. What do you think?” Her neck stiffened. Either she was surprised by the news, or she just didn’t like being reminded.
“Yes.” She spoke precisely. “It sounds like something Drazen would do, but I had nothing to do with it. And I wouldn’t.”
“Even if it meant you would have gone to jail?”
“I wouldn’t have done anything like that no matter what.” Harvey put his hand on the table next to hers, and the two of them entwined fingers. She did sound convincing.
“Okay, so everyone is looking for Roger. As a way to protect Harvey, I have committed to Drazen that I would find Roger for him. At the time, I had no idea that doing that would put your life, Rachel’s life, at risk. Your life would be at risk because Roger didn’t really kill Vladi. He knows that you did and would presumably use that tidbit as a way to save his own life, if forced to choose. Is all of that right?”
Neither raised an objection. “Good. That means we have a conundrum. Find Roger and save Harvey, or leave him lost and save Rachel. My goal is to save you both…and me, of course.”
“How do you expect to do that?”
“First, I need all the facts, starting with Betelco. I want to understand your relationship, Rachel, with the Tishchenkos. Start at the beginning, and don’t leave anything out.”
She hesitated, so I rephrased. “Susan Fratello says you brought the Tishchenkos into Betelco. She said you talked Roger into killing a pending deal to sell Betelco at a fair price in order to do it. Is that true?”
I thought one of Harvey’s almost useless legs would pop up and bang the table. “I beg your pardon?”
He looked at me, I looked at Rachel, and then we both looked at Rachel.
“All right, here it is. The cold, hard truth. It’s true. I did bring Drazen in.”
Harvey’s chin dropped about half an inch as he turned away. It wasn’t much, but enough to convey his disappointment. She brought her other hand up so that she was holding his hand with both of hers. “I’m sorry,” she said, trying to get him to look at her. “I had no choice.”
Gee, that was a shocker.
“It was my husband. My sweet, stupid, degenerate gambler husband. Gorgeous to look at, but…” She couldn’t suppress a wistful smile before she must have realized it was Harvey’s hand she was holding. “I never should have left you, baby. I didn’t know what a good thing I had.”
“What about Gary?” We needed to stay on point.
“Drazen likes to buy gambling debts. He looks for anyone he considers to be useful to him, like lawyers and accountants and cops. People on the inside of successful companies. Gary had a big debt we couldn’t pay. Drazen bought it and then told us he would kill him if I didn’t do what he said.”
“What did he ask you to do?”
She tried again to make eye contact with Harvey. He didn’t seem to be able to look at her, but he also hadn’t pulled his hand out of the knot of interlocking fingers and thumbs where she had tied herself to him. “Identify targets of opportunity for him. He had a lot of money coming into the country, and he needed legitimate places to wash it. He wanted it where no one would look for it.”
“You did this with other companies?”
“I had no choice.”
It made sense. As an auditor for midsize firms, she would have been in the perfect position to know who was vulnerable to a Drazen pillaging. “You figured out how badly Roger needed cash and brought the Russians in. Is that right?”
“Roger begged me to bring them in. He was all upset about the company going down, his father’s business and the family legacy and all that crap. At least, that was what he said at the time. He knew I had…connections. He asked me to hook him up. I told him he was better off with the deal he had, but he wouldn’t listen, and he wouldn’t leave me alone, so I did what he asked. I introduced him to Drazen’s people. Drazen came in and recapitalized him.”
“What did Drazen get in exchange?”
“He got to use the company for various things.”
“Such as?”
“What you’d expect. Laundering money. Shipping stuff around the world using Betelco as cover.”
“How much did Roger know?”
“Turns out good old Roger knew exactly what he was getting into. Not too long after they came in, he started giving me the cold shoulder. I didn’t see him much anymore. If you want to know the truth, I think he used me to get them in there, because once they were in with all their dirty cash, he started stealing it.”
“Stealing Drazen’s cash sounds like a risky strategy.”
“It put me in a very bad position, because if Drazen found out, he would have blamed me.”
“Let’s see, you screwed your lover, Roger, over by bringing in your Russian investors, then got worried that Roger was about to screw you back?”
“Exactly. I got the feeling he was about to take his dough and disappear and leave me holding the bag. I couldn’t let that happen. Drazen would have thought I was in it with him from the start. I had to know what he was up to, so I went through the books and…the books, if you know what I mean. I figured out where he was hiding the money. That night that it all came down, Roger and I were supposed to meet at the offices to talk about it.” She glanced again at Harvey and pitched her voice to him and him only. “That’s why I was there. I didn’t have any choice, baby. They would have killed Gary.”
The implications of doing what she had done to protect the man for whom she’d left Harvey, while she was sleeping with another man, seemed to elude her. “Anyway, he never came, but Vladi did. That’s the night it all went down.”
“That’s the night Vladi died?”
“Yes.”
“Keep going.”
“Vladi was like Drazen’s puppy dog. He followed him around and did errands for him. From what I heard, he was his bodyguard back wherever they came from. Vladi took a bullet for him more than once. Anyway, I was there at the offices working late that night when Vladi showed up. I was by myself, and all of a sudden, this big, hairy, smelly piece of crap whacked out on coke and God knows what else walks in, sees me, and starts drooling. I knew I was in trouble. He’d been up for days drinking and snorting and gambling and whoring. He thought I was just part of the package, a cute young thing sitting right there for the picking. I tried to talk to him, but those people-Russians, Ukrainians, whatever-to them, a woman is for screwing or beating or maybe both at the same time. He was on me before I had time to scream. He bent me backward over Roger’s desk and put his tongue down my throat.”
Harvey was listening closely. The healthy coloring in his face had been temporary. He was as pale as ever.
“There were so many different ways I thought I would die that night.” Rachel’s voice had softened. She was sounding as exposed as she must have felt lying across that desk. Harvey patted her on the arm. “I was scared out of my mind, so while he was groping me, I started looking for his gun. I knew he’d be carrying. He was so far gone when I found it, he didn’t notice. I shot him.”