Gambit, David Hagberg [most life changing books .TXT] 📗

could afford to lose a few tens of millions. And it had been nothing more than a game to him.

But in his opinion, Susan had crossed over the line, and he’d told her so this morning before she’d left.

“You have to be kidding,” she’d laughed.

“You’re fleecing poor bastards who have nothing.”

“This coming from a man who is willing to spend millions merely for a game? Of killing people for sport?”

“Hardly innocents.”

“Come off it, Thomas, you got screwed over because of a bitcoin deal that was probably bogus to begin with. So you wanted to do something to McGarvey and his wife, but you didn’t want to get your hands dirty, so you asked your Russian pal to take care of it.” The disdain in her wide eyes and the downturn of her pretty lips was palpable. “That’s so fucking typical of you.”

“The pot calling the kettle black?”

“I do my own dirty deals. And I don’t have to sign away anything to do them.”

“I would have backed the pipeline deal anyway.”

“Something like that has never been on your radar, and you know it,” Susan had said before she’d gone to the door. But then she’d turned back. “Be careful, Thomas, that this doesn’t bite you in the ass. That could be a wound so deep you’d never be able to recover from it.”

She was supposed to be back sometime this evening, but Hammond was beginning to wonder if he really gave a damn. She and her prima donna tantrums were beginning to wear thin for him.

He picked up his phone and called his Strategic Liaison Group office in Washington. One of the secretaries answered, but not until after five rings.

“SLG,” she said, a touch of what sounded like hysteria in her voice.

Hammond knew what might have happened, and he realized that he really didn’t give a damn about it either. “This is Tom Hammond. What’s going on?”

“Oh, sir, it’s Mr. Rodriguez.”

“What about him?”

“He’s dead,” the woman blubbered.

“What the hell are you talking about? Dead, how?”

“He was getting out of a cab a couple of hours ago out front, and a truck or something ran into him. He never had a chance.”

“Was the truck driver arrested?”

“We don’t know.”

“What the fuck do you know?” Hammond shouted.

“I don’t know,” the poor woman said.

Hammond broke the connection and slammed the phone down on the table, upsetting his wineglass.

The sommelier came out, but Susan was right there and sent him away. “I’ll take care of it,” she told him.

Hammond looked over his shoulder. “I’m in no mood for your shit.”

She came out to him, pecked him on the cheek, then righted his glass, refilled it with the Marchesi Antinori Tignanello pinot grigio in the ice bucket, and used his napkin to sop up the spill.

“I’m here,” she said. “Tell me everything so that we can figure out what to do.”

FORTY-SEVEN

About twenty minutes north of the Venice Inlet, traffic had increased dramatically. Everything from small- and medium-size sailboats to small and large motor yachts, plus canoes and kayaks singly and in groups, and literally dozens of Jet Skis, most of them driven by young people, some McGarvey figured not even teenagers yet, crowded the waterway that in some places was less than fifty or sixty feet wide.

“Could be our guy in any of those boats,” Pete said at one point.

McGarvey kept a sharp eye out ahead as well as behind to make sure they stayed in the channel. “A drive-by shooting?”

“Could be that simple.”

“But not elegant.”

“Could be if he’s thought of an escape route. These kinds of people don’t take a crap without figuring all the alternatives.”

And that was the one thing he’d always kept at the front of his mind. What if the obvious wasn’t so obvious? One bit or piece he hadn’t thought of, but that the opposition had.

A bright green Jet Ski coming up from the south cruised past at a reasonable speed for the traffic and the narrowness of the channel. By habit Mac glanced at the registration number and then at the driver, who had what looked like a beach umbrella bag over his shoulder. The man wore a swimming suit, a light shirt, and a baseball cap.

Ordinary, McGarvey thought. Too ordinary?

He looked over his shoulder until the Jet Ski disappeared from view.

Pete had been watching. “Something?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” Mac said. He got his phone from the starboard-side cockpit locker and speed-dialed Otto.

“You have something?”

“A green Jet Ski just passed us headed north,” McGarvey said. He gave Otto the Florida registration number.

“Just a mo,” Otto said. He was back in a few seconds. “It’s a rental from a place called Sporty’s just above the Venice north jetty.”

“Who rented it?”

“I’ll check our records,” Otto said.

“What’d you see that’s bothering you?” Pete asked.

“He had what looked like a beach umbrella bag over his shoulder.”

“So?”

“It wasn’t full. The top half was flapping in the breeze. He wasn’t carrying an umbrella.”

“A long gun,” Pete said. She grabbed the binoculars and looked aft.

Otto came back. “Probably not our guy. Name on the Amex card is George Schilling. An address in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Do you want me to do a background check?”

“Go ahead.”

“Was he alone?”

“The only one on the machine.”

“I mean was there another Jet Ski with him? He rented two of them; the second was to a woman named Carolyn Schilling, same address. Presumably, his wife.”

“Only the one,” McGarvey said. “But check them out anyway.”

Taio went out of the navigable channel into knee-deep water and powered down to dead idle. The sailboat headed south that he’d passed was a Whitby center cockpit ketch, and the man at the wheel was McGarvey. The woman with the binoculars his wife. He recognized them from the file photos he’d dug up.

The problem was threefold: Where the hell were they going, why were they suddenly on the move, and what to do about it?

He had the answers almost immediately. It didn’t matter where they were going or why they were on the move, because he was