Cut and Run (8 page)

And now the smile was practically frozen on her face. “I don't know.”

Wolfe shook his head and pushed his chair back from the table. He could see this was going nowhere—at least he'd gotten the detail about the business deal, though it was so vague it wasn't worth much. “All right, Ms. Shen, you can go. If we have any more questions we'll be in touch.”

She thanked him in a detached way and left. Wolfe sat at the interview table a while longer, gathering his thoughts.

Dragoslav takes a group of hookers and a business-woman out to party in his yacht. They're attacked at sea and there's a massive shootout, which wipes out both sides except for seven people who hide in a concealed meat cooler. We search the boat and don't find anything obviously illegal. No drugs, no weapons other than the ones used in the battle, no stolen merchandise or counterfeit money or anything else unusual
—
except one ugly, overgrown tuna.

It didn't add up. Something smelled rotten, and it wasn't the fish…

“H
EY
, N
ATALIA
,” said Cooper, knocking on the door jamb to the layout room. “Wanna go watch some porn?”

Natalia looked at him and blinked. “Why, Cooper, you smooth talker,” she said. “I thought you'd never ask. Are we going back to your place, or are you going to spring for the back row of a sleazy theater?”

Cooper grinned. “I was thinking more along the lines of the AV lab. I like my own equipment, if you know what I mean.”

“Not sure I want to,” said Natalia. “But lead on.”

They talked as they walked. “Okay,” said Cooper, “I've been checking out Marssai Guardon's sex video.”

“What a surprise.”

“Ah, but there
is
a surprise. Guardon's always claimed the video was made without her consent, but she's never denied it was her.”

“Are you saying it isn't?”

“Yes…and no. You'll see.”

They reached the AV lab. Cooper pulled an office chair on wheels up to a large monitor and motioned Natalia to sit down. He stayed standing, but leaned over to tap on the keyboard to one side of the screen.

“Okay. Now, this was apparently shot in a Miami nightclub called Morrocko. They have private VIP booths in the back, sort of semisecluded—private enough that the public can't get at the celebrities to bother them, but exposed enough that people can see that yes, they are actually in the same room as someone rich and famous.”

Natalia studied the screen. There was a shot of a booth, with a long table and a curving, black leather bench seat behind it. She recognized Marssai Guardon as the one sitting in the middle, with an attractive woman on one side and a handsome, male-model type on the other. They were drinking something out of oversize martini glasses, laughing and talking about some movie premiere.

“So far,” said Cooper, “all nice and innocent. Then Mister Two-Hundred-Dollar Haircut slides under the table…”

“Hmmm. Oh, my.”

“Yeah.” Cooper tapped a key and the image froze. “Now, what's the first and most obvious question about this little scenario?”

Natalia grinned and raised her eyebrows. “You mean
besides,
‘Where can I get one of those?' Who's filming it, of course.”

“Exactly. The picture doesn't jump around the way something handheld would, so the camera was in a fixed position. There are different theories as to where—some think a camera was hidden in a nearby planter, others say a rigged dessert cart was carefully positioned—but I'm going to go out on a limb and say it was a good old-fashioned tripod.”

“What, behind a mirror or something?”

Cooper leaned back and crossed his arms. “Nope. Right out in plain sight.”

Natalia frowned. “You're saying this was staged. Everybody involved knew exactly what they were doing the whole time.”

“I'd bet on it. See, everything
below
the table is X-rated, but everything
above
the table is strictly PG-13. Well, maybe Restricted—Marssai and her girlfriend play a little tonsil hockey at one point.”

“So? The other people in the club can't see what's going on beneath the table, right? All they see is Marssai doing her
When Harry Met Sally
Meg Ryan impression.”

“And that's the impression they're
trying
to give—that they're doing something naughty right out in public. Did you know they charge five hundred dollars to eat in that booth now?”

“I'll resist the urge to ask what's on the menu.”

“In this case,” said Cooper, “a great big serving of body double.” He leaned over and tapped the monitor's screen, right at the thin edge of the table. “This isn't a single piece of footage. It's two pieces, carefully edited together. In one, Marssai Guardon and her female friend sit down, have a drink, and make out a little before Marssai fakes an orgasm. In the other, Haircut Guy sits at the same table with someone else. When he goes…downtown, it's not Marssai Guardon he's expressing his affection for.”

“How can you tell? That it's a fake, I mean?”

“If you're referring to the recording itself, I'd love to be able to dazzle you with a highly technical explanation…but I don't have one. No, two things tipped me off, both of them fairly mundane.” He tapped at the keyboard, zooming in on one sector of the image. “First, I noticed that Marssai doesn't move her upper body at all during the scene—that's to keep her positioned so the double can match her exactly.”

“Yeah, her posture is a little weird—even when she's making out with the other girl she doesn't lean over.”

“The second thing was her legs. The double's legs, that is—they're too long. I took measurements and compared them against other photos of Marssai, and if the legs under the table were hers, she'd be six inches taller.”

Natalia gave Cooper an appreciative nod. “Nice work. So there's no way this could have been done without Marssai's cooperation, right?”

Cooper hesitated. “Well, I'd say it was highly unlikely—but I can't
prove
she knew what was going on. That's the problem with art, right? It's all subjective.”

“I think that refers to whether or not something
is
art. In this case, I just need to know whether the artist is being honest with her public.”

“You'll have to ask her. But be careful where you sit when you do.”

“Good-bye, Cooper.”

 

Natalia spotted Frank in the CSI break room, hunched over a small and battered laptop. She walked over and sat down.

“Oh, hey, Natalia. Thought I'd hide out in here and catch up on the case. Try to do this at my own desk and people keep wanting my attention.”

“Reading the Davey files?”

“Yeah, just about finished. Sounds like it would have been a funny book.”

“I thought you said you weren't interested in the fiction?”

He shrugged. “Figured this was my last chance to enjoy his stuff. Besides, you never can tell what might prove useful in an investigation—you guys taught me that.”

“Well, the audio on the tape recorder didn't give us anything—but Cooper managed to redeem himself.” She told Frank about the faked video.

Frank looked thoughtful. “Hang on. So she helped make an X-rated video about herself, then denied it in public but didn't mention the fact it wasn't her?”

“So it seems.”

Frank shook his head. “That make any sense to you? 'Cause from where I'm sitting, it's about as crazy as a soup sandwich.”

“Maybe she's covering up for someone else.”

“Someone who uncovered her? Then why make the thing in the first place?”

Natalia frowned. “Maybe somebody got cold feet after the fact. Somebody with more to lose than Marssai Guardon.”

“Could be. If so, we don't know who she is.”

“No,” said Natalia. “But we
do
know someone who does.”

 

The Fish and Game representative was a short, scrawny man named Quinkley, with an egg-shaped balding head and thick, tortoiseshell glasses that looked like they'd been made three decades ago. He walked into the lab wearing an old beige trenchcoat and a shapeless gray fedora, a beat-up black suitcase in one hand. He ignored the receptionist's desk and instead waved down the first person he saw—Calleigh.

“Excuse me, young lady,” he said. His voice was a dry rattle. “Could you be so kind as to direct me to the morgue?”

“Certainly,” said Calleigh. “But visitors need a badge. You can get one from reception.”

“Oh, I have one.” He fumbled in a pocket and pulled out an ancient rectangle of yellowed plastic with a pin on the back. He was trying to pin it to his lapel when Calleigh stopped him.

“That one's a little out of date,” she said with a smile. “We use lanyards now. Come on, I'll help get you checked in.”

“Thank you.” He peered at her with eyes that looked like plums through his glasses. “You're very kind.

“I haven't been here since you remodeled,” Quinkley said as he filled out the form at the reception desk. “Building looks more like an art gallery than a lab.”

“Best antidote for evil is sunshine, my father used to say,” said Calleigh.

“Science isn't about evil,” said Quinkley, handing back the form. “It's about knowledge. How can you get anything done with all these—these windows? In my day, science was done in a sealed room. If we wanted light, we turned one on.”

Calleigh smiled despite herself. “What are you here for, Mister Quinkley?”

“Necropsy on an ocean sunfish. Nobody at F and G knows much about them, so they called me.”

“You're a consultant, then?”

He nodded. “I teach at Florida State—marine biology. I know a little something about the
Molidae
family, so they contacted me.”

“I saw them bring it in. It's quite the specimen.”

“Largest bony fish in the world. I understand this specimen is around four thousand pounds.”

Calleigh whistled. “Well, good luck.”

“Luck? Luck has nothing to do with science, either.”

Quinkley found the autopsy theater without any trouble. The sunfish was lying flat on two large wheeled tables; Eric Delko was holding its mouth open with two gloved hands and peering inside.

“Watch out for the sea lice,” said Quinkley, shrugging out of his trenchcoat.

Delko looked up. “Excuse me?”

Quinkley opened his suitcase and pulled out a white lab coat. He slipped it on and said, “Sea lice. You can find them all over the
mola mola
—even on the tongue.”

“You must be Doctor Quinkley.”

“I am. Are you in charge?”

“I'm Eric Delko, the CSI conducting the investigation, yes.”

Quinkley pulled out his own pair of gloves and pulled them on. “All right, CSI Delko—what can you tell me about this fish?”

Delko filled him in on the relevant aspects of the case. “I think this fish might have been used to smuggle something, but so far I've come up empty. Anything new you can tell me might help.”

“Schwimmender kopf.”

Delko blinked. “What?”

“It's what the Germans call them. It means
swimming head
.”

Delko grinned. “Okay, I didn't know that.”

Quinkley looked around, then picked up his briefcase and put it down on a stainless-steel counter.
“Bezador
in Spain,
Manbo
in Japan,
Putol
in the Philippines. But my favorite is from Taiwan—they call it the toppled-car fish.”

“Yeah, it does sorta look like a Volvo fell on it.”

Quinkley undid some latches on the side of his suitcase and splayed it wide open, displaying rows of gleaming chrome instruments held in place by strips of black elastic. “I brought my own tools, if that's all right?”

“Fine by me.”

Quinkley selected a hacksawlike tool with a wickedly serrated blade. “Then let's begin.”

 

“Delwyn Keith?” Natalia asked, holding up her badge. “I'm Natalia Boa Vista, from the Miami-Dade crime lab. I have a few questions for you.”

The tanned young man lying on the sunlounger at poolside studied her through extremely expensive sunglasses. “Crime lab? What is this, a gag? Come on, where's the camera?” He glanced around, a broad smile blooming on his face.

“I could ask you the same thing,” said Natalia. Frank Tripp stood behind her, his arms crossed. “But I already know where the camera was. What I don't know is who was behind it.”

A frown wrinkled his forehead. “Huh?”

“The video with Marssai Guardon, the one that gave you your fifteen minutes of fame—I know it was faked. I want to know the names of everyone else involved.”

The frown went away, replaced by a blank smile. “Hey, I don't kiss and tell. Marssai's lawyers talk to my lawyers and I pay their lunch bill—that's about all the involvement I have.”

“Don't try to con me, Delwyn.” Natalia crossed her own arms. “I do research for a living, and I'm pretty hard to fool. Despite all the uproar in the press, Marssai Guardon never filed suit against you. Why do you think that is?”

He shrugged, the smile still in place. “Gratitude? I mean, it's not like I didn't show her a good time—”

“It was all scripted, and her orgasm was as phony as the video itself. You and another woman were edited in after the fact, and Marssai knew it.”