Hard Rain (13 page)

‘Anna told me a couple of your lawyer jokes last night when we were lying in bed. Very funny.’

We were lying in bed
. . . I wondered what Masters had told Wadding about our history. And why were they both so keen to inform me they’d been climbing the hairy pole recently? Whatever the reason, Masters’ fiancé obviously wanted to come out fighting from the bell. Who was I to deny him a round or two? ‘I’ve got a short one you might appreciate, Colonel,’ I said.

‘Bring it on. I think I can take it,’ he said. The smile was attached to his face, locked in place, even before I began.

‘So there’s an old lady having her will drafted. The job done, the attorney charges her a hundred bucks. She agrees, gives him a C-note, but fails to notice another hundred-dollar bill stuck to the back. On seeing the two bills stuck together, the attorney puts the ethical question to himself, “Hmm . . . Do I tell my partner?”’

Wadding chuckled without a shred of warmth in his face, that fop of his bouncing around like a skunk with a broken back. If I had three wishes, I’d have used up one just to give him hair plugs. ‘Yes . . . That’s very funny, isn’t it?’ he said.

‘If I laughed any harder I’d be coughing up lung,’ I replied, deadpan.

I caught sight of Masters standing slightly behind him. She wasn’t happy. She mouthed the word ‘Enough’ at me, but I wasn’t finished.

‘Colonel, Special Agent Masters tells me you’re heading up the DoD’s depleted-uranium class action defence. That must be a pretty tough gig.’

‘Tough? Well, no, not really. Like many of these things, mostly it’s just a case of rampant opportunism on the part of a small percentage of people with too much time on their hands.’

‘Really?’ I said. ‘I heard there were more than a thousand of those so-called opportunists lining up to take a swing at the department, and more joining in every day. One of them is a buddy of mine.’

‘What’s his name?’ he asked. ‘I might know him.’

‘Tyler Dean.’

‘Dean . . . Dean . . .’ Wadding appeared to be having trouble placing him.

‘You would’ve heard of Tyler, Colonel,’ I said. ‘He drove an Abrams M1A2. Went to Iraq with the 1st Armoured. Slept with DU ammo for most of his tour. Twelve months ago they took half his insides out. He used to bench-press 220 pounds; now he does a crap and barely has the strength to lift up his pants.’

Wadding’s smile had gone on vacation and left a nasty frown to house-sit. ‘I think if you reviewed the evidence that’s readily available, Special Agent, you would come to think, as most reasonable,
informed
people do, that depleted uranium ammunition is perfectly safe and not in the least harmful to human life. There is no evidence to support your friend’s assertion that DU is the reason for his affliction. Have you read the Capstone report on the subject, by the way?’

‘Hasn’t everyone?’ I said, making a mental note to find out who the hell this Capstone was and what he’d said in this report.

‘Then you know the score. There are probably other reasons for your buddy’s troubles. He could just have been unlucky genetically.’

Wadding and I looked at each other. The smile was back, a hint of victory in it.

‘Richard, I might have to catch up with you later,’ Masters interrupted, before I could regroup. ‘Special Agent Cooper and I have a witness to interview.’

‘No problem,’ he said. ‘Well, pleasure to meet you, Special Agent.’

I wouldn’t have called it that.

There was a knock on the door. It was a lardy clerk type pushing the IT equivalent of a gurney, on top of which sat an old beige box with its leads hanging out. ‘Special Agent Cooper?’ he asked. ‘Did you request a printer?’ He put the question to the most authoritative-looking person in the room – Wadding.

‘I
don’t know what you see in this jerk,’ I said as we went down in the elevator to the parking lot. Masters didn’t answer. ‘Can I ask what you see in this jerk?’

‘No, you can’t,’ she replied.

‘The whole depleted-uranium mess he’s involved with doesn’t trouble you at all?’

‘Richard is doing his job, just like you and me.’

‘No, nothing like you and me.’

‘Really. And why do you think we’re so different?’

‘Because if we do our jobs right, there’s no question about guilt or innocence. The suspect either is, or isn’t. Guys like Wadding are the Uri Gellers of facts. They twist them up so that guilt looks like innocence. Tyler Dean – that buddy of mine? I don’t believe your fiancé has never heard of him, because he is, in fact, the pin-up boy for the plaintiffs – their front man.’

‘What about Capstone?’ Masters asked.

‘What about it?’ I said.

We climbed into Emir’s home away from home. Masters read him the address for Ms Fatma Zerzavatci from the note Karli had given her. I was getting used to Emir. Maybe because Emir was getting
used to chauffeuring without putting his mouth into drive.

‘If, as you say, your friend Tyler is the point man, he’d know about the Capstone report,’ Masters continued. ‘And if he hasn’t filled you in on the report’s findings, then it’s probably because he didn’t want to put any doubt into your head.’

‘So why don’t you?’

‘A Capstone report was compiled for the government on the effects of depleted uranium ammunition in response to claims that it was carcinogenic. The report found that the health risks of depleted uranium oxides were comparable to many other battlefield materials; that it was no more and no less lethal to our people that anything else out there in the Iraqi desert.’

‘And who put the report together?’ I asked. ‘One of Mr Geller’s people?’

‘You’ll believe what you want to believe, Vin, as you always do.’

Masters turned away and watched the people on the sidewalk huddle along in the cold. Conversation closed. Suited me. I didn’t want to get into an argument I didn’t know enough about to win. I made a mental note to give Tyler a call and get some background on Colonel Wad.

Fatma Zerzavatci, alias Mrs Bremmel, Dutch Bremmel’s personal assistant and the woman who assisted him personally at the Istanbul Hilton on a regular basis, was a tall, slender woman of twenty-seven with skin the colour of cream. Her eyes reminded me of honey, or at least one of them did – the other being bright red with burst capillaries buried in a puffy purple-and-black bruise that spread down her left cheek like an advancing electrical storm.

Usually a resident of Eskisehir, the headquarters of TEI where she and Bremmel worked, the woman was in town until the Istanbul police said otherwise. So she’d moved in with her mother, grandmother and two unemployed brothers for the duration. From the outside, the house looked like it’d been made by one of the three little pigs, the one who’d
used sticks, or, in this instance, old blackened fence palings. Geographically speaking, the street was close to Beyoglu, the affluent area where Doctor Merkit had her practice; socio-economically, however, the place’s immediate neighbour was skid row.

A young man of around twenty-five, who I figured was one of the brothers, answered the door when we knocked. He opened it angry, and his demeanour deteriorated from there. I saw Fatma behind him, head bowed. I showed him my shield and he reacted by yelling at us in Turkish, shaking his fist and smacking his open palm against the doorjamb hard enough to shake the floor beneath my feet. I noticed he’d lost some skin from two of his knuckles – probably somewhere on his sister’s face. He banged the door shut.

A couple of seconds later, after more shouting, the other, younger brother tag-teamed, opened the door, and took over the yelling, then slammed it in our faces again.

Masters and I stood our ground.

Next, Mrs Zerzavatci, who was wearing what appeared to be a black tent, opened the door. Was this the mother or the grandmother? I’ve always found a beard on a woman confusing. Fatma Zerzavatci stood calmly in the hallway, head still bowed, while the emotional storm raged around her.

We showed our shields again. Masters took half a step forward and asked, ‘Fatma, do you mind if we come in and ask you a few questions?’

Granny put her hand out and pushed Masters back. I took that as a yes, she would mind.

‘It is all right,
Mooshie
,’ Fatma told her, attempting to soothe the old woman. ‘I have to talk with them.’

Even if Zerzavatci the elder didn’t understand the words, she picked up on the tone, standing aside reluctantly. She shook her finger at us and appeared to be threatening dire consequences if we did whatever it was she didn’t want us to do. I had no idea what that might have been.

‘Please come in,’ said Fatma.

The old woman muttered at us as we squeezed past. Once we were
inside, one of the angry brothers stuck his head out of a room at the end of the short hallway and shouted at us some more.

‘Please . . . in here.’ Fatma indicated a room with a sweep of her hand.

The house might well have come down with a huff and a puff, but inside it was spotlessly clean, at least this room was. A huge 52-inch flat-screen plasma sitting on a designer stand dominated it. The box seat was provided by a designer tan leather couch covered in plastic, like the seats in Emir’s car, partnered by two leather armchairs also wearing furniture condoms. Scattered across the couch and armchairs were purple silk cushions embroidered with a silver pattern. A collection of plastic flowers stood in a cut-glass vase positioned on an expensive iron and glass stand. The walls were covered in soft blue- and greenstriped wallpaper, and several framed photos of old people hung here and there. Dark red Turkish rugs covered the floor. To say the décor was a lot more than I expected was the day’s understatement.

Fatma took one of the armchairs. Masters and I sat on the couch.

‘Did your brother do that?’ enquired Masters, indicating the young woman’s shiner.

‘It is nothing,’ Fatma said, touching her cheek self-consciously.

‘Where did all the loot come from, Ms Zerzavatci?’ I asked. I knew the answer, but I wanted to see how candid the woman was prepared to be.

‘Dutch and I were lovers. He bought me things,’ she said.

Okay, I thought, she passed that test. ‘Is that why your brothers are so upset? The presents have dried up?’ I asked.

‘I have dishonoured my family.’

‘We can organise protection, you know,’ Masters said.

Could we? I wasn’t so sure about that. I cut in before Ms Zerzavatci decided to take us up on the offer. ‘How long had you and Mr Bremmel been lovers?’

‘We started seeing each other six months ago.’

I flipped open my notebook. ‘You started working for Mr Bremmel seven months ago.’

‘Yes, we were lovers almost from the start. He was unhappy, lonely.
His wife didn’t love him anymore. She went back to America. They were husband and wife in name only. He told me he was going to leave her for me.’

I glanced at Masters and caught the slightest arch of an eyebrow. Her turn for an I-told-you-so moment.

‘You met him at the Istanbul Hilton every two weeks?’ I asked.

‘Not always. Sometimes we missed the appointment. Dutch worked very hard.’

‘Did you meet anywhere else?’ Masters enquired.

‘No. The Hilton was our special place – our reward, he would say.’

And Dutch sure collected it, I thought.

‘Had you told anyone about your affair? Your brothers, perhaps?’ Masters asked.

I knew where Masters was going, and it was a reach. Two brothers, two killers – plenty of passion. I didn’t buy it for a second, but she was right to tick it off the list.

‘No, we were careful,’ she said.

Hmm . . . not careful enough. The killers, whoever they were, knew of their regular sausage sizzle at the Hilton. ‘Did Mr Bremmel make it up to the room, Ms Zerzavatci?’

The young woman’s chin quivered. ‘No, he didn’t. I was waiting for him. I was getting worried because he had not called to say he would be late. And then the police came to the room with the hotel security man and another man – I think it was the manager. I saw them and I was very worried. I knew something had happened, something bad.’

And now for the question I already knew the answer to. ‘Do you know of anyone who might have wanted to kill Mr Bremmel, Ms Zerzavatci?’ Aside from, as Masters had suggested, the real Mrs Bremmel? Fatma was a looker – beautiful in that pouty, Mediterranean way. She was the kind of woman who, in my experience, most other women feel threatened by, especially older women, and especially older women whose husbands had them for PAs.

Fatma Zerzavatci answered the question like I expected she would. She shook her head. ‘No, I can think of no one.’

‘Did Dutch Bremmel have good relationships with everyone at work?’ Masters asked.

‘Yes, yes,’ said Fatma, head bowed.

‘So, no threats from anyone? Arguments? Heated discussions?’

‘You ever see him push in front of someone at the staff canteen, maybe?’ I asked.

Masters looked at me, her eyes narrowed to slits. Ms Zerzavatci did likewise, only without the eyelid theatrics, unsure about whether she’d heard me right.

I explained: ‘At this point, Ms Zerzavatci, we’d check up on just about anything.’

‘No. Everyone liked Dutch. He was funny. He made people laugh – always telling jokes.’

I recalled how close I’d come to a horrible death myself the other day when telling Masters my lawyer jokes. Maybe that’s what had happened here – Bremmel had simply told the wrong joke to the wrong person at the wrong time. Only that didn’t explain the finger up the guy’s emergency exit: the Portman connection.

I had no reason to doubt this woman’s story. The facts were straighter than Hugh Hefner. She was having an affair with the boss, and someone stalked him and killed him for reasons that had something to do with Portman, reasons she knew nothing about. About all we were going to squeeze from Bremmel’s girlfriend here were tears, which I noticed had started to flow down the peaches-and-cream cheek, as well as the one that reminded me of stewed fruit. We still had nothing besides two very dead bodies – no leads and no suspects.

‘I
t is a beautiful day to be in Istanbul, no?’ said Emir, lighting a Camel as we pulled away from the kerb.

‘No,’ I answered, agreeing with him.

‘What did you think of that?’ Masters asked.

‘Of Fatma?’

‘Yeah.’

‘I felt sorry for Mrs Bremmel – against someone like Ms Zerzavatci I don’t think she stood a chance. I also think the girl knew about as much as we did. Less, even, if that’s possible. I hate to say it, but I think Doctor Merkit’s right. We’re going to need another murder before any of this makes sense.’

‘Where to now?’ she asked.

Adem Fedai rented a room in the suburb of Fatih, west of Sultanahmet and across the Golden Horn. I used the drive time heading there to go back over in my head what we had, hoping to find something I might have missed, even if it was a question we hadn’t asked that might yield a useful answer.

Right now, the killers were probably closing in on someone else
connected with the F-16 upgrade. There was a pattern of sorts here, but not the kind Doctor Merkit was used to working with.

Masters’ cell rang. She answered it, said hello to Captain Cain. She said ‘Uh-huh’ half-a-dozen times, a ‘No way’ and a ‘You’re kidding, really?’ before ending the call.

‘What gives?’ I asked.

‘Two bits of news. You were right about those blast blankets. The Istanbul police divers just recovered three of them stuffed in plastic bags 400 yards from the Portman place, weighted down with dive belts. There’s also more evidence to suggest you were right about there being two killers. In the bag, along with the blankets, were a couple of pairs of disposable coveralls.’

If I was right about the blankets, I also had to be right about there being a boat positioned to drop the killers off and pick them up.

‘Excuse, please . . . we are here,’ said Emir, interrupting my train of thought. ‘I cannot park on this road. I will have to drive around.’

‘What about that car there?’ I asked. Up ahead, a Fiat was stopped half on and half off the road.

‘Oh, that is
polisi
. They can park where they like.’

The police were staking out Ocirik’s, waiting for Fedai to return to his digs above the café, and advertising the fact. Emir was in the process of extracting a Camel, so I got out of the car before he had the opportunity to share it with me.

It was sleeting pins and needles of ice. I jogged over to an awning outside a local fast-food joint and took shelter beneath it, Masters a couple of paces behind. Inside the shop, a guy was cutting meat from an enormous cone skewered in front of a vertical grill. It made me hungry until I saw the ash from the cigarette in the corner of his mouth fall off into the shaved meat and get rolled up in the flat bread. But then I thought perhaps I was going soft and ordered two, one each for Masters and me. My turn to make a peace offering.

‘So I think, along with two killers, there has to be a support crew,’ said Masters as she pushed her hands into a pair of fur-lined gloves. Her nose was red at the tip with cold, her eyes full of blue-green fire.

‘Looks that way,’ I agreed. Perhaps we were making progress after all, even if the going was slow. I heard the call to prayer. A sprawling white marble mosque crowned the hill a couple of hundred yards further up the road. A tram rocked by in the middle of the street, almost empty. There was a fair bit of foot traffic, though I wouldn’t have called the sidewalks exactly crowded. Istanbul hadn’t quite broken for lunch.

I got a tap on the shoulder, bringing me back to the here and now. ‘Did you buy this for me?’ Masters asked, peeling the paper off the kebab. ‘The guy in there just handed it to me.’

‘Yep.’

‘Thanks,’ she said, and handed me mine. ‘I accept your apology, by the way.’

We ate in silence, scoping the premises diagonally across the road, the one we’d come to see.

Ocirik’s was a water-pipe and tea joint that put on belly dancing for the tourists at night. Ocirik himself was a famous Turkish wrestler, according to Captain Cain. While I watched people drift in and out, I wondered what Ocirik’s gimmick was when he wrestled and whether he’d ever come up against John Cena. Then I wondered if he had, who’d won. A steady stream of local guys strolled into the place along with a smattering of tourists. Adem Fedai, the manservant who came with the residence Portman leased, kept a room on the first floor at Ocirik’s when he wasn’t at Portman’s beck and call.

Before I realised it, I’d finished the kebab. It was good. Maybe the tobacco ash was a secret-herbs-and-spices thing.

‘Mmm . . . delicious,’ said Masters, putting the wrapper in the trash. ‘Let’s go.’ She stepped off the sidewalk into a break in the traffic.

Ocirik’s was accessed down a narrow pathway that opened out into a sheltered courtyard dominated by a large leafless tree and a type of central glasshouse. Most of the patrons sat outside, under the shelter of awnings from surrounding buildings, warmed by gas heaters scattered here and there. There was a large crowd of pre-lunch smokers sucking on hoses that snaked down into bubbling water reservoirs. If my nose wasn’t deceiving me, the air was thick with the smell of
tobacco-flavoured coffee. Waiters wearing blue-striped jackets with ‘Ocirik’s’ stencilled on the back weaved amongst the crowd, tending to the pipes, popping red coals onto this one, re-stoking that one. Other waiters moved between the tables delivering tea and coffee on swinging trays.

Tucked under the awning beside us was a photo gallery featuring wrestling bouts in full swing as well as various large-breasted belly dancers. They were big and hairy and oiled up. And so were the wrestlers. The gallery orbited a life-size photo of a bunch of hirsute boulders stacked one on top of each other – Ocirik, probably. The photo was signed in the bottom right-hand corner. I wiped the glass: yeah, this was Ocirik in his prime. Cena wouldn’t have stood a chance. There’d have been no choreography in this guy’s moves.

‘Can I you help?’ came the voice behind me.

Something was blocking the light. I turned and saw the biggest man I’d ever laid eyes on. He looked familiar. Ocirik. The guy was a monster, maybe twenty years older than the rock pile in the photo. I pulled my shield from my back pocket and gave him a good long look at it. ‘Mr Ocirik, you speak English?’

‘A little,’ he said, demonstrating by holding his thumb and forefinger together. His thumb was almost as thick as Masters’ forearm.

‘I’d like to ask you some questions about Adem Fedai. You know this man?’ I enquired.

Masters pulled a small snapshot of Fedai and showed it to him.

‘Yes, he live here.’

‘Does he still live here?’

‘Yes.’

‘When did you last see him?’

‘I see him in one week.’

‘You saw him a week ago?’

‘Yes. He give money for the room. I tell you this already.’

‘You told who? Us?’

‘
Polisi
.’

‘Would you mind showing us his room, Mr Ocirik?’ I asked.

‘I show
polisi
already.’

‘We are different
polisi
, Mr Ocirik,’ said Masters.

‘There is nothing to see. He has only a bed.’

‘Has he taken his clothes?’ asked Masters.

‘No. His clothes are there.’

‘Has he gone away before? Left for a week or more?’

Ocirik didn’t get it, the overhang on his bus-shelter-sized brow furrowed with confusion. Masters repeated the question a couple of times in different ways until the meaning sank in.

‘Yes, sometimes he go away.’

‘When does he need to give you more money for the room?’ Masters asked.

‘He must give money in three weeks.’

‘Did he always pay rent one month in advance?’

Ocirik shook his huge, bony noggin. ‘I no understand.’

‘Did he always pay rent by the month?’

Ocirik shrugged. It was clear this was one 300-pound language barrier we weren’t going to push through.

‘I couldn’t help but overhear,’ said a man who’d been sitting nearby sucking away on a water pipe. ‘Perhaps I can help?’

‘That depends,’ Masters said. ‘You speak Turkish?’

‘Yes, of course,’ he replied with a smile, indicating his Turkish-language newspaper and tucking it under his arm. ‘What do you want to know?’

‘We want to know if his lodger always paid rent a month in advance.’

‘Okay,’ said the impromptu interpreter. He put our question to Ocirik, and Ocirik gave him an answer. ‘He says no – the man usually pay his rent after two weeks.’

‘Thanks,’ said Masters.

‘Anything else I can ask him for you?’

‘Ask Ocirik whether he’ll change his mind and open up the lodger’s room for us,’ I said, giving Ocirik my public-relations smile. ‘Just in case he’s wavering on the point.’

The stranger put it to Ocirik.

‘Ocirik says he’ll change his mind if the lodger doesn’t return and his rent falls due.’

‘Fair enough,’ I agreed. Masters and I had no legal means of forcing him to comply anyway.

Another man almost as big as Ocirik, but maybe only half his age, came up and tapped him on his shoulder. This had to be Ocirik’s son. The younger man – K2 to the old man’s Everest – pointed impatiently to a couple of crowded tables across the courtyard. Ocirik said, ‘I must go now.’

‘Anything else?’ asked our interpreter.

‘Well, we’d like two apple teas and a water pipe with cappuccino-flavoured tobacco,’ Masters told him.

‘Sure. I get for you,’ said Ocirik, there being nothing wrong with his menu English.

‘Before you race off . . .’ I said to him.

Ocirik grunted.

‘You see Fedai, you call.’ I held out my card and added a little mime to get this request over the line.

Ocirik examined the card before slipping it in his pocket. ‘I call,’ he promised, walking off into a cloud of tobacco smoke.

Masters thanked the stranger for his assistance. He gave us a nod, deposited a couple of notes on his table and left.

‘Cappuccino-flavoured?’ I asked her.

‘Can’t you smell it? The tobacco’s flavoured here. You can get all kinds.’

‘So this is what, a carcinogenic Baskin-Robbins?’

Masters shrugged. ‘When in Rome . . .’

‘I didn’t know you smoked,’ I said, taking a seat.

‘I don’t. The last time I smoked was when I was last in Istanbul.’

‘When you met the colonel.’

Masters ignored the comment. ‘So, what do you make of Fedai?’ she asked instead.

‘I think he’s lying low somewhere. Maybe he got scared and thought
someone might want to hang Portman’s murder on him. I think he’s coming back here, or intended to come back. Otherwise, why bother paying a month’s rent in advance? He’d have just skipped.’

Masters thought about it, then said, ‘He might have paid to give himself a head start, and make everyone think he was coming back.’

‘Yeah, maybe.’

Ocirik’s gargantuan offspring brought the water pipe and picked at the nuggets of burning tobacco with a long pair of tongs. Masters then sucked on the pipe so that its water reservoir bubbled away and the tobacco glowed orange and then red. The tea appeared, brought by another waiter.

‘If it’s okay with you, I want some time off tonight,’ she said, blowing smoke at the empty table beside us.

‘I’m not your boss,’ I informed her. I sipped the apple tea and it reminded me of Doctor Merkit.

‘No, but I’m giving you the courtesy of letting you know.’

‘Fine by me,’ I said. It wasn’t, but there was nothing I could do about it anyway. If Richard Wadding was what Anna Masters wanted, then I’d misjudged her. I doubted that, but my options on that score had been cut to zero.

‘So, that means you’ve got the night off, Vin. What are you going to do with it?’

‘Pack.’

‘Excuse me?’

‘We’re going to Incirlik Air Base.’

‘Why?’

‘We’ve done all we can here. Maybe the people Portman and Bremmel were dealing with can throw some light into the darkness for us. The upgrade on these F-16s seems to be the only real link that I can see.’

‘Agreed,’ said Masters with a nod.

‘What’s that like?’ I asked, gesturing at the water pipe.

‘Like inhaling cappuccino-flavoured smog on a cold day.’

‘He’s not right for you, Anna.’

‘And I suppose you are?’